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Hackers steal $97 million from Japan's Liquid crypto exchange
Hackers have stolen almost $100 million in cryptocurrency from digital wallets held by Japan's Liquid exchange.
Sound-based liquid printing could lead to new designer drugs
Liquid printing is virtually ubiquitous thanks to inkjets, but the materials can only be so sluggish before it stops working. What if you wanted to print a biological material, or even liquid metal? That might happen soon. Harvard researchers have developed a technique that uses acoustic levitation to print droplets of materials that wouldn't normally be so accommodating, including metal and honey. The approach uses a subwavelength acoustic resonator to create a sound field that pulls substances from the printer nozzle at over 100G -- even some of the most viscous materials can't resist that tug. You can control the size of the droplets using the amplitude of the soundwaves, and place them anywhere you like.
Reebok Liquid Speed shoes use 3D drawing for a better fit
We've seen a number of limited release shoes built using 3D printing, but now Reebok is coming in with its own attempt to rethink the traditional molding process. Reebok's Liquid Factory draws the frame of these shoes in three dimensions, using a special "high rebound" liquid created by BASF. According to Head of Future Bill McInnis, this helps "create the first ever energy-return outsole, which performs dramatically better than a typical rubber outsole." Also, the Liquid Speed's winged frame wraps up and over the shoe, making for a tighter fit in all directions.
Acer's H7 is the world's first USB Type-C display
You probably don't know Acer for its smartphones, but the company has nonetheless been pushing out handsets for years. Its latest is the Liquid Jade Primo, a Windows Phone teased a few months back, which arrives with a couple of tricks up its sleeve. Internally, it's virtually identical to Microsoft's own Lumia 950 and 950 XL, with a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED display, Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, 21-megapixel rear and 8-megapixel front-facing camera. So far, so Windows Phone. Like the Lumias, it can connect to a monitor and turn into a "PC." But Acer's announcing a second product today that makes that transition much smoother.
Acer's Liquid X2 smartphone is another globetrotter's dream
Sure, you probably don't need a smartphone with a massive 4,000mAh battery and a trio of SIM card slots, but thanks to Acer, your author can't stop thinking about one. Acer's so-called Liquid X2 is clearly well-equipped to play globetrotter, but (just like the Predator tablet) the company's spokespeople were awfully light on the details. Still, we know it comes with a 5.5-inch screen and a 64-bit octa-core processor thrumming away within its surprisingly sleek frame, along with a pair of 13-megapixel cameras nestled high along its face and back. At last, a device that takes selfies as seriously as HTC's Desire Eye.
Acer's Liquid series: hands-on with the new E3 and Z4
Last week, Acer announced its latest budget smartphones ahead of Mobile World Congress, and as expected those devices are making an appearance at the show. We guessed that the €199 ($275) Liquid E3 is looking to go toe-to-toe with the Moto G in terms of specs, while the €99 Liquid Z4 ($135 or so) fights it out with a whole host of low-end handsets. With a 4.7-inch, 720p IPS screen, quad-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB of internal storage and 13-megapixel rear camera, the Liquid E3 is clearly the more exciting of the two, but head past the break where we take a closer look at both of Acer's new Android phones.
Acer Liquid S2 hands-on (video)
Acer's known for its influence in the PC and tablet markets, but it actually has a pretty solid Android smartphone lineup too -- and the company is starting to focus more intensely on it. Take the Acer Liquid S2, for instance: it's a 6-inch Android smartphone with 4K recording capability, a Snapdragon 800 processor and a 13MP camera, and we had the opportunity to check it out here in Berlin ahead of IFA 2013. The unit, which is hitting Europe in October for 549 euros, will come in both black and red hues. Reps indicated to that the units they had on hand are still pre-production, so both firmware and hardware are subject to change between now and the phone's launch. With that said, we didn't notice any bugs or issues with general performance, but let's face it: even when it's not fully optimized, a device packing Snapdragon 800 still feels incredibly fast. Head past the break for our first impressions.
Colloidal Display uses soap bubbles, ultrasonic waves to form a projection screen (hands-on video)
If you've ever been to an amusement park, you may have noticed ride designers using some non-traditional platforms as projection screens -- the most common example being a steady stream of artificial fog. Projecting onto transparent substances is a different story, however, which made this latest technique a bit baffling to say the least. Colloidal Display, developed by Yoichi Ochiai, Alexis Oyama and Keisuke Toyoshima, uses bubbles as an incredibly thin projection "screen," regulating the substance's properties, such as reflectance, using ultrasonic sound waves from a nearby speaker. The bubble liquid is made from a mixture of sugar, glycerin, soap, surfactant, water and milk, which the designers say is not easily popped. Still, during their SIGGRAPH demo, a motor dunked the wands in the solution and replaced the bubble every few seconds. A standard projector directed at the bubble creates an image, which appears to be floating in the air. And, because the bubbles are transparent, they can be stacked to simulate a 3D image. You can also use the same display to project completely different images that fade in and out of view depending on your angle relative to the bubble. There is a tremendous amount of distortion, however, because the screen used is a liquid that remains in a fluid state. Because of the requirement to constantly refresh the bubbles, and the unstable nature of the screen itself, the project, which is merely a proof of concept, wouldn't be implemented without significant modification. Ultimately, the designers hope to create a film that offers similar transparent properties but with a more solid, permanent composition. For now, you can sneak a peek of the first iteration in our hands-on video after the break.%Gallery-162176%
Acer Liquid Gallant Duo up for pre-order on Expansys, SIM-swappers silently applaud
Acer's line of Liquid handsets aren't really chart toppers on any Android fan's most wanted list, nor should they be. But for the budget-conscious globetrotter, there's a strong case to be made for its awkwardly named Gallant Duo's serviceable specs, dual SIM support and affordable £149 ($230) off contract price tag. The 4.3-incher, available now for pre-order on Expansys, packs a qHD display, single-core 1GHz MTK 6575 processor, 4GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD), a 5-megapixel rear camera and 1,500mAh battery into an unassuming chassis. Sure, this slightly above average handset won't garner the envy of the quad-core crowd, but it'll at least let you sit confidently at the ICS table. Check out the source below to reserve your claim for this under the radar offering.
Acer Liquid Glow hits the FCC, keeps its secrets
Acer's Liquid series phones only occasionally reach the FCC, so it's with some surprise that we've just spotted the still-fresh Liquid Glow getting the US agency's approval under its E330 model name. Details are scarce as to whether or not there's been any changes made to the Android 4.0 phone on its way out of Taiwan, however: there's no telltale signs like cellular frequencies or carrier badging. If anything, Acer is hoping to keep information hush-hush by stamping a 180-day confidentiality seal on the manual and photos. It's entirely possible that this is the international GSM model with no 3G support for North American carriers, so we wouldn't get worked up about local release plans. Even so, knowing Canadian carrier Rogers' tendency to offer Acer phones, there's still a possibility that a version of the Liquid Glow might go on sale this side of the Pacific.
Hands-on with the Acer Liquid Glow at MWC 2012 (video)
Given the phone's name, you'd think the Acer Liquid Glow would be best shown off in an infomercial, but in reality it's the next in line for the long-running smartphone series. The Glow hasn't been quite as popular as the CloudMobile at this week's MWC, and for good reason -- its bigger brother won an award in product design, after all. But that doesn't mean it should have to suffer the anguish of living in the shadows. The Liquid Glow is quite a bit smaller, offering a 3.7 inch WVGA display, 5MP rear camera, 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon S2 CPU and 512MB of RAM. The device will run on its own customized ICS ROM at launch, but it was using stock Android ICS this week. The UI, we've been told, will be lightweight with a homegrown tweaks to the lock screen, status bar, messages and the phone dialpad.The Liquid Glow is just a tad thick, but we enjoyed how it felt when holding it as a result of the phone's curves matching the contours of our hand. If you have large hands or just crave a device with a bigger screen, this will probably be a little too small for you. In fact, the handset feels like it's smaller than it really is -- for those who prefer tinier phones but still desire as big a display as possible, this may be a rather good compromise. Its overall design scheme actually reminds us a lot of the CloudMobile, especially given those curves and Acer's signature arcs found on the top and bottom of the device. There are some major differences in terms of overall design, such as the inclusion of capacitive navigation buttons on the Glow as well as the lack of a soft-grip textured back, but the family resemblance is certainly there. We didn't notice any lags in software performance, but we'll need to check back when production-quality firmware is available at its launch. All in all, we think the Liquid Glow will wind up being a worthy competitor as long as it's reasonably priced. No availability date has been set, but we should expect to see it in stores sometime this summer. Our video and image gallery will guide you through the radiant goodness below.%Gallery-149013%
Mobile World Congress 2012 preview: what will we see?
Without hesitation, February always seems to be the most hectic time of the year for the mobile industry, thanks primarily to the annual Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain. The show has long been considered the proper venue for phone and tablet vendors to show off their latest and greatest innovations. Naturally, the internet is been set ablaze with plenty of rumors and even a few official product announcements from companies hoping to benefit from some solid pre-show buzz.In this guide we'll take you on a tour and walk through the hardware we already know will be shown off at MWC, as well as what we should likely expect to see and the things we'd really love to hear more about but probably won't. Join us after the break, won't you?
World's longest lab experiment still going strong, via webcam
In 1927, a physics professor named Thomas Parnell launched an experiment on viscous liquids. 85 years later, we're still waiting for his results. It all began with a funnel, a beaker, and some melted tar pitch. Parnell, a professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, was hoping to demonstrate that brittle tar pitch actually behaves as a liquid when kept at room temperature. To prove this, he melted some tar pitch, let it cool for three years, and placed it within the funnel, held over the beaker. The first drop rolled down the funnel eight years later. The second came nine years after that. By the time the third rolled around, Parnell had already passed away. Following his death, the experiment was shelved, quite literally, in a closet, before Professor John Mainstone revived it shortly after joining the University of Queensland in 1961. In 1975, Mainstone successfully lobbied the university to put the experiment on display, but he likely could've never imagined how large an audience it would ultimately have. Today, in fact, the experiment is on display 24 hours a day, via a dedicated webcam. It's been hailed as the world's longest running lab experiment, and it's available for gazing at the source link below. Mainstone expects the next drop to come down the pipeline sometime next year, but you probably shouldn't hold your breath. The last drop ran down the funnel in 2000. Unfortunately, it was never recorded on video, due to a very untimely camera malfunction.
IBM sees stacked silicon sitting in fluid as the way to power future PCs
Generally, the combination of microchips, electricity and fluids is usually considered an incredibly bad thing. IBM, however, thinks it can combine those three to make super small and super powerful computers in the future. The idea is to stack hundreds of silicon wafers and utilize dual fluidic networks between them to create 3D processors. In such a setup, one network carries in charged fluid to power the chip, while the second carries away the same fluid after it has picked up heat from the active transistors. Of course, 3D chips are already on the way, and liquid cooled components are nothing new, but powering a PC by fluids instead of wires has never been done before. Bruno Michel, who's leading Big Blue's research team, has high hopes for the technology, because future processors will need the extra cooling and reduced power consumption it can provide. Michel says he and his colleagues have demonstrated that it's possible to use a liquid to transfer power via a network of fluidic channels, and they to plan build a working prototype chip by 2014. If successful, your smartphone could eventually contain the power of the Watson supercomputer. Chop, chop, fellas, those futuristic fluidic networks aren't going to build themselves.
BlackBerry Torch 9810 review
In the fall of 2010, AT&T stores nationwide installed a mysterious shroud housing some sort of exhibit. Even employees didn't even know what was inside, and anyone caught tampering with the makeshift wall in order to find out was terminated. What was this strange hype-building marketing ploy? A new iPad? Perhaps it was some secret Android device that nobody had heard of? The atmosphere was thick with suspense. When the curtain was finally lifted, it turned out to be... a BlackBerry Torch 9800. This curious marketing attempt must've worked at least to some extent, since Research in Motion decided to tempt fate a second time with the Torch 9810. Known in its early days as the "Torch 2," the new version of the portrait QWERTY slider was released to much less pomp and circumstance. This time it was unveiled alongside two new BlackBerry BFFs: the Bold Touch 9900 / 9930 and the Torch 9850 / 9860. The 9810 in particular wasn't a surprise because we'd been given the opportunity to preview the device in May. Though it's nearly identical to the original, it packs a processor that nearly doubles the speed -- a behind-the-scenes upgrade culminating in a night-and-day contrast. But how does it fare against the blooming market of superphones that are flooding the market? And is this the best BlackBerry you can buy today? Let's find out. %Gallery-130688%
Puddle preview: Liquid assets
Discovered among the demo units at Konami's pre-E3 event yesterday, sandwiched in between much less surprising titles like Burgertime: World Tour and Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour (with names as generic as their gameplay) was Puddle, an intriguing little game wrapped around a splashy concept. The Konami rep running Puddle didn't have a lot of information on the game's origins, but a little Googling reveals something surprising: Puddle was a winner in the Independent Games Festival's Student Showcase at GDC 2010 earlier this year, put together by a team from the French school ENJMIN. The Konami display listed Neko Entertainment as the developer for the release on display, so presumably the French developer has hired those students to release the PC title (still available for download) on Xbox 360 and PS3. The PS3 version is Move compatible (the Xbox version is controller-only, I was told), and that's how I played it. While the version on display was clearly still a work in progress, with most levels missing and lots of placeholder code in the UI, it was enough to see there's something special about this game.
Acer Liquid mt hands-on (video)
The Acer Liquid mt, everybody! Oh come on, don't be such snobs, so what if it only has an 800MHz CPU, a humble 3.6-inch screen and standard 800 x 480 resolution? It's a pocketable and delightfully rotund little device, and Acer's added a couple of tweaks that we actually found quite useful. The biggest is a part of Acer's skin atop Android 2.2, which is set to be upgraded to Gingerbread "soon," a boilerplate promise with any device not running Google's latest. The Liquid mt offers multiple lock screens, allowing you to do things like control media and check your messaging inbox without having to unlock the phone and enter an app. It's a pretty sweet implementation, as is the simulated page-turning unlocking animation. The handset's rear features a 5 megapixel autofocus camera and the stainless backplate that gives it its name (mt standing for "metal"), but its top is most intriguing -- it has multiple status lights integrated under the metallic surface, which light up to give you alerts for things like low battery status or unread messages. Check out more of this handset in the gallery below. Update: Now with added video sauce. %Gallery-116563%
Acer Liquid Mini and BeTouch E210 hands-on
Acer didn't just land in Vegas with Iconia tablets galore -- it brought along its new Liquid Mini and BeTouch E210 Froyo smartphones. The 3.2-inch Liquid Mini is the most interesting of the two, and like its larger older brothers, it's made of a black glossy plastic, which is bound to pick up more fingerprints than Sherlock Holmes. It will be actually be available in quite a number of hues, but Acer only had the black one on display. Still it's one cute phone, and with a 600MHz Qualcomm 7227 processor, 512MB of memory, and a 5 megapixel cam it's bound to fill Acer's mid-range smartphone offering quite nicely. That said, the unit we saw hanging around Acer's private suites wasn't working all that well -- in fact, it rebooted itself twice. This one was running Acer's own software layer on top of 2.2; the BeTouch E210 seemed to be running stock Froyo. Speaking of the BeTouch, it's a lot like the E130 with its BlackBerry-like form factor and awesome physical keyboard, except the E210 has been slimmed down and upgraded to that aforementioned 600MHz Qualcomm CPU. The E310 on display was working much better than the Liquid and while it wasn't blazing fast, it kept up with our scrolling and navigating in and out of menus. No word on US availability, but they should be hitting the UK market sometime soon. Hit the break for some beauty shots. %Gallery-113385%
Acer Liquid Metal S120 spotted running Android 2.2 on AT&T bands in FCC
Rumors of a 3.6-inch 800 x 480 Liquid Metal handset from Acer have been heating up in recent months. Now the aluminum handset said to be housing an 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7230-1 processor just cleared the FCC sporting GSM/EDGE 850/1900 and WCDMA Band II and V making it the perfect candidate for an AT&T launch. The listing also confirms Android 2.2 Froyo, GPS, Bluetooth, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi on the tested model S120 DVT2 (that's Design Verification Test 2) prototype. With an October launch set for the UK, well, it won't be long before we see this babe in North America. A bit of documentary evidence after the break.
Tetris played in 3D... on 9000-droplet-per-second liquid projection TV (video)
Sure, we've seen Tetris pop up in unusual places before, but never on a liquid 3DTV. While rows of droplets don't actually create the image here -- it's merely "painted" onto the falling H2O pixels -- computer-controlled solenoid valves can cycle 50-droplet curtains of water at up to 60Hz, making for a video-capable projector screen. See it in action after the break, or hit up the source link for a deep dive into how it works.
