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Amazon launched a textbook rental service; a $170 title goes for $50/semester. Translation: more beer money. [The Verge]

Eight-Core ARM GPUs Could Bring Console-Class Graphics to Your Smartphone

Right now, ARM graphics aren’t exactly bad. The Samsung’s Galaxy SIII with its quad-core Mali 400 GPU leads the pack in mobile prettiness, but the upcoming ARM GPUs, scalable to eight-cores, could blow it out of the water. While we’re still waiting on the next generation of Mali chips which includes the T604 and the…

Spectacular Image of Mars Curiosity’s Descent From Space

This is absolutely incredible. The HiRISE camera NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was able to spot Curiosity as it was descending on the surface of the red planet. You can clearly see the capsule and the deployed supersonic parachute. https://gizmodo.com/the-mars-curiosity-rover-has-landed-live-coverage-fr-5932039 The MRO was listening to transmissions from Curiosity. The photo shows the parachute working perfectly: Details…

Why the Cloud Sucks

I’ve had too many personal experiences get messed up just because companies change things on the cloud. I’ve come to a depressed state of feeling that I own nothing on the cloud and have no ability to keep things working the way they do. Features change and get dropped, things you depend on disappear, etc.…

The iPhone Is Literally Four Times as Powerful as the Curiosity Rover

Last night NASA landed on Mars. An amazing feat! But guess what? The Curiosity rover’s on-board computer is a pretty low-power system. In fact, the iPhone 4S is four times more powerful. Check out the specs below. https://gizmodo.com/the-mars-curiosity-rover-has-landed-live-coverage-fr-5932039 Surprised? Don’t be. NASA knows what it’s doing. It has just enough to do everything it needs.…

A photograph of Curiosity during landing has been leaked!

A few hours ago, NASA’s HiRISE team announced that it had acquired an image of Curiosity during its epic descent to the Martian surface. That image was originally scheduled to be released at NASA’s morning press conference, scheduled for 9:00 am PT, but Spaceflight 101 and Discover magazine are reporting that the image of Curiosity…

This Week’s TV: One of our favorite animated movies of all time gets a TV show!

One of the coolest animated films of all time is getting a weekly TV show — and here’s your first taste. Plus you can relive the amazing landing of Curiosity on Mars, with a TV special that gets up close and personal with high-quality reconstructions of every stage of the landing. Plus both Futurama and…

If you’re interested in sharing a data plan on AT&T, you can do that starting August 23. [AT&T]

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Arrives Safely on Mars

NASA has done it. The largest and most sophisticated spacecraft ever sent to another planet has landed safely on the surface of Mars. We live-blogged Curiosity’s arrival, but for those of you who couldn’t watch it live, here’s what we saw during the most remarkable Mars landing in history. https://gizmodo.com/liveblogging-curiositys-arrival-on-mars-5932015 That’s not exaggeration, by the…

Why the Next iPhone’s Tiny SIM Could Make a Big Difference

The latest supposedly leaked iPhone 5 part is a tray for a nano-Sim card. We’re skeptical about the authenticity of the images from Nowhereelse.fr, but there’s plenty of reason to believe that Apple will use an even tinier SIM on its next-gen iPhone. Who cares? It turns out a little SIM could be a big…

Are we running out of time to kill Hitler via time travel?

Most people here have heard about the Grandfather Paradox. Most people here have also read at least one time-travel story in which people either take out or attempt to take out Hitler. But if we have one, can we possibly do the other? The Grandfather Paradox is as old as the concept of time travel.…

Ukraine Officials Shut Down Demonoid to Impress the US Government

Just before an official state visit with the US, Ukraine’s Interior ministry seized all of Demonoid’s servers, rendering the torrent site non-functional. Serving the most popular torrent destination following the neutering of The Pirate Bay, TorrentFreak believes the site was a target because Ukraine wanted to prove to the US that they take copyright infringement…

Artwork from scrapped Nightwing cartoon shows off DC heroes, Legend of Korra style

Several years back, Legend of Korra director and artist Ki Hyun Ryu created character designs for an animated series starring Batman’s sidekick Dick Grayson, who usually goes by the crime-fighting moniker Nightwing. Even though this series never went anywhere — and Cartoon Network went with Young Justice instead — Ryu recently posted his concept art…

Towering PC Heat Sinks Call for Ridiculous Amounts of Space

Sure, you can go with a fan to cool your PC if you’re boring and concerned about things like space. If you’re more towards the insane side, you might drool over these ludicrous custom heat sinks. Given that each sink stands about 16 inches tall, and the whole rig weighs about 11 pounds, it’s probably…

The Beautiful Video Game That Drives NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover

So MSL Curiosity has landed. It survived the seven minutes of terror and safely touched down on the surface of Mars. A miracle in its own right. Now that it’s there, it needs a way to move around. Anyone who played Lunar Lander and Moon Patrol already knows how they’re going to do this: Video…

The Perfect Hoodie for Your Next Attempt to Take the Iron Throne

Chadwick Dillon created this incredible Grey Knight hoodie a couple of months ago for his Etsy shop, but was flooded with so many requests that he couldn’t keep up with demand. Now all we can do is hope he’ll open up shop again and give us the armor we have so long desired. Or perhaps…

New Hobbit trailer shows off a bit more Gandalf

The latest trailer for Peter Jackson’s Hobbit is similar to the first, but this one has a much more serious temperament, along with more footage of Gandalf and the forest of Mirkwood. This makes sense, as we’ve picked apart the earlier trailer and interviews and both Gandalf and the elves of Mirkwood have two character…

This is easily the best lunar photograph of the 1800s

The landing of the Curiosity rover represents another inspiring jaunt humanity’s taken into the nearby reaches of our Solar System. But in the late 1800s, such fantastical expeditions were sequestered to Jules Verne novels, and starry-eyed spacefarers were forced to reconstruct our cosmic neighbors on Earth (and furnish them with bored, mustachioed security guards). http://io9.com/5931905/mars-curiosity-roundup…

Is It Possible to Make a New Tablet Look Exciting?

As Apple and Samsung continue to battle over product design, a possible new HP tablet has popped up in their marketing fluff with an intriguing look (see those tapered edges?! SEE?!). But considering that a successful tablet design is one with as little weight and volume around the screen as possible, is there still room…

Wikipedia’s main page is down and other entries are loading slowly. Bad news if you’re writing a term paper. [The Verge]