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Black hole ejects massive energy jet after devouring a star
For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of a black hole ejecting a hot "flare" of matter after devouring a star the size of our sun. The discovery was made thanks to the quick action of of scientists from John Hopkins University, who worked in conjunction with a team from the University of Oxford. Hubble fellow Sjoert van Velzen from Hopkins heard last year that Ohio State U researchers had spotted a transient star that was caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole some 300 million light years away. In theory, the event (dubbed ASASSN-14li) would result in a "tidal disruption" of the star, resulting in a hot flare burst energy jet emitted by the supermassive black hole.
Has the free-to-play bubble burst?
Richard Bartle isn't alone in thinking the free-to-play bubble is soon to burst. Talking at this week's Develop Conference in Brighton, UK, three mobile game designers with an expertise in free-to-play discussed the negative direction that F2P titles are headed and why that may be coming to an end. "I would rather have 10,000 people who play my game for two years, than a million people who only play for a short time," Matthew Wiggins of mobile studio Jiggery Pokery states. The discussion, as reported by Gamasutra, focused on the unsavory practices of quick in-and-out publishers who were only out to make gobs of cash as quickly as possible. But one industry vet thinks that the F2P bubble has burst. "I think we're moving away from the aggressive initial monetization," CSR Racing studio boss Jason Avent says. "Those people who love your game are happy to pay for it. It's getting people into that longer game... We need to move away from exploiting a small number of people, and instead work to make lots of people stick around."
The Summoner's Guidebook: League of Legends isn't just one gametype
After last week's edition of the Summoner's Guidebook, I realized that one of the things I sort of take for granted is the advantage of taking many of LoL's different gametypes into account when I value a particular item. For instance, last week we talked a lot about Rabadon's Deathcap, but it (and its sister item Wooglet's Witchcap) has drastically different values in different game modes. It's a lot easier to justify buying a Deathcap when you have easy sources of gold and a lot of time when you're trying to gather it. If you have to fight, more defense becomes an imperative. If you don't play a lot of Dominion or Twisted Treeline, you might not realize that Bloodthirster and Infinity Edge are hard to buy when fights can erupt faster than ultimate skills can recharge. Expensive items like a Needlessly Large Rod or BF Sword are hard to justify when you can get some interim item that provides more balanced stats and will help win the fights you're fighting now. Playing other game modes also gives you a broader look at League of Legends. You don't see the value of certain stats -- particularly HP -- until you realize that an extra 200-500 HP can cause a huge swing in the course of an engagement.
Pro Tip: Damage meters don't tell the whole story
Some people /ignore others in random raids or dungeons for language or bad play. I add to my instant /ignore list those who spam the meters in raid chat. Anyone who cares about whose bar is the longest is already measuring on their own screen. Not only is the reporter almost always on the top (and conveniently never reports when s/he is below), but displaying the damage done for a fight to the same raid who's on the meter is just pure epeen spill. Asking for a damage meter is just laziness (or, in rare cases, a really crappy computer paired with a log-intensive fight). Let's not forget that problem of boiling a player down to a single number. All three roles of the holy triad have a complex set of abilities for every encounter.
Refresh Roundup: week of October 1st, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Engadget's smartphone buyer's guide: summer 2012 edition
Despite the sweltering heat waves, our spirits are high at Engadget, and for good reason: it's time for our summer edition of the smartphone buyer's guide. Here, you'll find our top recommendations for the best smartphones across several US carriers, along with the best QWERTY and budget alternatives. In many ways, it's now easier than ever to find a world-class smartphone, but unless you've developed a strong brand preference, choosing one is likely more difficult than ever before. It's no secret that the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III have firmly cemented themselves as the premier smartphones of the day, but if you're torn between the two, we'll reveal our preference in this latest installment. Summertime also brought a bit of a shock, as Microsoft revealed that Windows Phone 8 apps won't be compatible with the current generation of Windows Phone hardware. For this reason, we've excluded all Windows Phone handsets from consideration in the latest buyer's guide. While the future of Microsoft's mobile platform looks incredibly bright, a purchase now would guarantee obsolescence in the short-term. Instead, all prospective Windows Phone purchasers must wait for the next generation of handsets to become available -- you'll regret it otherwise. Naturally, there is no shortage of rumors surrounding the next Apple iPhone, and given the handset's current lack of LTE connectivity, the iPhone 4S is certainly showing its age. While cautious purchasers may choose to bide their time, the iPhone remains top-notch in many other respects, and its arrival at a number of prepaid carriers brought a breath of fresh air to an otherwise stagnant environment. If you're curious to see how it all unfolded -- and we know you are -- join us after the break, where we round up the very best smartphones of the season.
Nokia Lumia 900 Camera Extension app previewed in Hong Kong (video)
You're looking at Camera Extension: a new app for the Lumia 900 that, er, extends the phone's camera function by adding burst, timer and panorama modes plus, most notably, a smart group shot feature. The latter takes five pictures in five seconds, then cuts out the heads and lets you swap 'em out in the same way that BB 10's Timeline Lens (amongst others) works. Will the app bring you out in goofy smiles? Find out in the video after the break, where WeLoveWindowsPhone.hk gives it a go.
Refresh Roundup: week of April 9th, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Engadget's smartphone buyer's guide: spring 2012 edition
Springtime is here. It's a season of renewal, and similarly, an ideal time to replace your aging phone with one that you'll adore. With this in mind, we give you Engadget's smartphone buyer's guide -- your one-stop resource for selecting the best handset that fits your desires and budget. This time around, we're doing things a bit differently. In addition to naming the top phones for each provider, you'll now find more comparisons across carriers. This should help you find the best possible handset -- regardless of network -- if you're willing to make the switch. Also, you'll no longer see limited-time offers as our budget picks -- they'll still get a mention, but now, only phones that commonly retail below $80 will qualify for this coveted spot. Naturally, new smartphones are always coming onto the market, so before you make your final selection, be sure to consult our reviews hub for the very latest recommendations. With that in mind, read on as we round up the best smartphones of the season.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Burst!
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Josh Hughes of Team Kaizen delves into the fun side of education, and the educational side of fun with Burst!, a PC/Android title that mixes explosions with science. What's your game called and what's it about?Our game is called Burst! and it's meant to be the indie rhythm game for indie musicians! In Burst!, players queue up and detonate fireworks to the beat of music. We've also integrated a tad bit of STEM design (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) into Burst!: Players unlock different elements off of the Periodic Table as they advance, which enables them to make new colors of fireworks -- this is how real fireworks get colors.Burst! is currently in a limited-functionality Flash-powered beta on the Android Market and it is available to play online.How can video games help students learn more about science and technology? What advantages does gaming offer teachers?Games naturally offer a "safe to fail" environment. Meaning, if you're testing out a physics-related problem, if something goes wrong you can asses it, start the problem over again and tackle it with the newfound knowledge from the failed attempt. This means users are engaged to solve problems instead of being presented with the fallacy that they are "too stupid" to solve them. I believe that, in true-blue educational settings, some of the most powerful game tools come from these user-generated-content games. This is because they not only can be used to teach information, but they directly engage users to go into create mode and experiment with the knowledge.It isn't something you regurgitate on a test anymore; it becomes key information in solving a problem within a game you care about. This relates directly to the test group of kids we are working with at a local grade school. These kids (eight of them, four boys and four girls from grades fourth to sixth) are learning STEM one meeting a week and learning LittleBigPlanet and game design two meetings a week. Within a very short period, they were asking their teachers if they could stay after school to learn, coming in on vacations and skipping class parties so they could engage in learning more.On their own accord, without teacher prodding, they asked if they could use school computers to build a shared-knowledge database on the school's network so their levels are as historically and scientifically accurate as possible. They've commandeered white boards and begun drawing out details of their levels, including time periods they need to research to make them perfect. And this is only a test group!I believe that these kinds of games will have an increasingly important role to play in education because of this kind of engagement; the learned knowledge means something and directly plays into self-empowerment and self-expression, so retention goes through the roof.
Pantech Burst review
Consider the high-end smartphone. While you lust after those, Pantech is on the prowl, steadily adding to and improving upon its army of budget offerings in the US. It may not be as formidable a force as the Samsungs and Motorolas of the world, but the outfit is finally beginning to leave a mark. Once a complete unknown outside of Asia, the phone manufacturer is keeping itself incredibly busy on this side of the Pacific, cranking out low-cost devices for AT&T and Verizon. Now, Pantech's focus has turned to LTE, starting with the $50 Breakout on Big Red, followed by a smartphone and tablet option on Ma Bell. Pantech Burst official on AT&T Pantech Burst hands-on Pantech Element hands-onThe Pantech Burst is the inaugural entry-level LTE smartphone in AT&T's lineup, debuting at $50 with a two-year commitment. Don't let that bargain-basement price turn you off, though -- this thing's got plenty of mojo to back it up, which makes the Burst a stark contrast to its Verizon counterpart. But what can we expect from a budget-friendly handset? Is Pantech finally pushing out a device that will help it earn a new level of respect from American consumers? We're bursting at the seams to answer those questions and take the device for a spin after the break. (Yes, we just went there.)
PSA: Pantech Element and Burst get bundled together at AT&T, $250 on contract
In case you forgot, both Pantech's new dual-core smartphone and waterproof tablet have arrived and Ma Bell's bundled the pair together to form some kind of middleweight Android tag-team. The price of a matching tablet and smartphone? Expect to pay $250 on contract, and you'll need plans for both the Element and Burst. Those feeling flush can grab the full details at the source.
AT&T Pantech Burst hands-on at CES 2012 (video)
Pantech has been going after the budget-conscious subscribers on AT&T for quite some time now, but it now it finally has the opportunity to do the same thing on Ma Bell's network that it did with Verizon: offer a cost effective handset with LTE included. And we have to say: we were overall quite impressed both with the phone's feel and laundry list of specs. For $50 with a two-year commitment, the newly announced Burst -- available in both black and red -- offer a 1.2GHz dual-core Scorpion CPU, Android 2.3 (which Pantech confirmed to us that it will be upgradeable to ICS at some point in the future), 5MP rear camera with LED flash and 720p HD video capture and 2MP front-facing cam.Our first impression was rather positive. The 4-inch display will be a convenient option for most, and the Super AMOLED makes it bright and colorful. It felt comfortable in the hand and we enjoyed the smooth design and tapered sides. As always, we were disappointed in the lack of a dedicated camera button, though we can't say it surprises us anymore -- it seems as though Pantech typically shies away from that option. We're not huge fans of the proprietary OS, as mentioned in our review of the Pantech Pocket, but during our brief time with the device, it seems to be incredibly speedy and void of bugs. Check out the gallery below for plenty more angles, and feel free to watch our hands-on video.
Pantech Burst official on AT&T with LTE, available January 22nd for $50
Pantech's already made a move to dominate the lower end of Verizon's LTE lineup, and if AT&T's recent announcement was any indication, it's about to do the same on the largest GSM carrier as well. The Burst is AT&T's answer to the Breakout in terms of pricing, but the laundry lists of the two phones actually have a few gaping differences: the former employs the use of a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, 4-inch Super AMOLED 800 x 480 display, 5MP camera with LED flash and 720p HD vid capture, 2MP front-facing cam, 16GB of internal storage space and microSD slot with a capacity of up to 32GB and a 1,650mAh battery. The Gingerbread-running Burst will be available in either black or red on January 22nd and can be yours for $50 with a two-year commitment. Considering Pantech's other offering for the same price, we can't say it will be a terribly difficult decision if you're looking for a budget phone on the lineup. We'll have our hands-on soon, so stay tuned. Update: Check out the CES hands-on here
Panasonic and Pentax pack a pair of pickled firmware updates, DMC-G2 gets 3D, K-5 better bursting
Well, lookie here, a couple of little firmware files have wandered into our midst. Panasonic gets credit for the most interesting with its 1.11 update for the DMC-G2, offering a "performance enhancement," an improved AE lock that holds even when using the touch shutter, and support for the new H-FT012 lens we recently played with -- the one that adds a third dimension to your otherwise 2D shooter. Pentax, meanwhile, has a 1.01 update for its K-5 that will let you capture 20 RAW images in a burst, which a lot more than the eight it can grab currently. Then there's "improved stability for general performance such as exposure range on HyP mode," which sounds awful nice too. Both are available now, so mosey those SD cards on over and click on through.
Overheating iPod delays rush-hour train in Tokyo
Poor Apple. The company just can't catch a break these days. On Wednesday, Apple Japan began offering customers iPod nano replacements, giving in to local government demands to better address an overheating battery issue affecting Apple's first generation iPod nano players. Then Friday morning (making the English-language press only now) a busy rush-hour commuter train was stopped in Tokyo to investigate a smell. According to a spokesman, "When a member of staff went to investigate inside the train, a passenger came over showing him that the iPod she was listening to had burst apart." No injuries were reported and the exact iPod model is still unknown. However, we can be certain that the eight minute delay on Japan's notoriously timely railway system caused many commuters to question their ability to go on. [Image courtesy of Maruhachi-kotsu]
Analysis: Mobile games aren't worth $5.4 billion
Jeremy Laws at Cabana Mobile has an interesting little analysis up about mobile gaming that claims it may not be as big as it's cracked up to be. Laws says there's no way the mobile gaming market can hold up $5.4 billion, as was reported earlier this year by Juniper Research. Laws looks at the top 10 companies releasing mobile games (at retail -- that will become important in a minute), and claims that even if those companies make up 70% of total mobile games, the total amount of mobile game sales only comes up near $1.7 billion, far short of the Juniper number.So where's the discrepancy? It's almost certain to lie in the App Store, where Juniper says growth more than made up for the dropoff of sales in other areas, like Java-based games. Laws does list companies like EA Mobile and Gameloft, whose games are selling on the App Store, but almost all of Laws' companies are old-school mobile developers, who created games for mobile phones before the App Store was ever open for business. Plus, his "retail" mention might mean the App Store isn't included in his calculations at all -- can you call the App Store "retail"? In fact, if any mobile games marketplace is going to make up over $3 billion in the mobile games market, it's got to be the App Store, right?So this means a couple of different things: one, the App Store very well could be remaking the face of mobile gaming, to the point where old-school numbers are just plain insufficient to compare to modern App Store sales. Second, if there is a bubble, it'll likely be in the App Store: another recent report says that if you spend more than $40k on a 99 cent game, you're losing money. Laws may be underestimating the long tail of the App Store -- certainly no single developer has pulled in billions, but there are a lot of developers out there. Still, at the same time, $5.4 billion does seem high. And if games companies are convinced there's gold in the App Store hills, that's where the bubble will eventually burst.
Shifting Perspectives: Tanks, "Wrath," and crushing blows
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we examine the roots of the uproar over the proposed Heart of the Wild nerf, and also ask ourselves if it wouldn't just be easier to reroll a Death Knight and have done with it."Why would you title the column this way?" you ask, as you reach for your "Please fire _______ from WoW Insider" form letter. "Crushing blows are out of the game, dipwad." Well, yes. The crushing blow is technically out of the game, but another and worse mechanic has taken its place. In this article I'm going to try to explain the source of "shield tank" frustration over health pools -- and why they are correct to see it as a problem -- and the Druid tank's unhappiness over the nerfing of Heart of the Wild -- and why Druids are also correct to see it as a problem.Why the crushing blow was importantOne of the biggest differences between pre-Wrath and Wrath tanking is the absence of the crushing blow. If you're unfamiliar with the term, then as a very simple explanation: any given raid boss had a 15% chance per melee hit to perform a 150% damage attack, which was also known as the crushing blow. It was typically a big damage spike and could lead to a wipe on progression content, with healers struggling to compensate in the small window of time before the boss' next attack landed. Burst damage is very unwelcome as it's often the greatest contributing factor to tank death. This is why reaching crit immunity is still so important to all tanks, and why the ability to avoid or absorb crushing blows was a fundamental part of pre-Wrath tanking mechanics.
Apple credits Kane Kramer with invention of the digital audio player -- sort of
Apple phoned up Kane "world's biggest failure" Kramer recently and had him testify in court against on Burst.com on Apple's behalf. It was a bit of a coup for Kramer, who invented the digital audio player in 1979 (with a whopping 3.5 minutes of song capacity), lost the patent when his company IXI went bankrupt in 1988, and hasn't made a dime off the idea since. While Apple was happy to use his expert witness to get out of a legal bind with Burst, and to pay a consultancy fee, there are no plans to give Kramer a slice of that iPod revenue pie. "To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all." Still, he's looking for a bit of cash from Apple for his copyrighted drawing of the player (above), which bears an uncanny resemblance to Apple's iconic player.[Via MAKE]
Blood Sport: RMP Rampage
PvP in its purest form is a beautiful thing. Amanda Dean, always obsessed with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat brings you news you can use in the Arena. When last seen, former Blood Sport columnist V'Ming Chew was seen being chased by an angry pack of Gnome Warlocks in the farthest reaches of Outland. In 3v3 matches, Rogue, Mage, Priest (RMP) teams have proven to be the ones to beat. Six of the top twenty Arena teams on live servers sport this composition. This team combines outstanding crowd control with abilities to survive until the end of combat. The team is not unbeatable, if caught without cooldowns available, this low-armor team falls prey to burst damage, especially if the Priest is dead or otherwise occupied. The Priest's primary function in the group is dispelling both offensive and defensive abilities. It may also Mana Burn if there is no need for healing or dispelling. In practice, since the priest is often the first target, it spends a lot of time and mana staying alive with the Rogue and Mage work their magic (and stab things). The Priest is often the primary target in the composition because they are usually the only ones visible at the start of the fight and are the lone healer partnered with two pure DPSers. Pain Suppression is your friend and my enemy.
