There will be no Hollywood sequel for Dwight Howard.
Following several days of meetings and a frantic series of reports on Friday, Howard has decided to join the Houston Rockets, as first reported by Sam Amick of USA Today Sports.
“I’ve decided to become a member of the Houston Rockets,” Howard said in a brief statement issued via his Twitter account. “I feel its the best place for me and I am excited about joining the Rockets and I’m looking forward to a great season. I want to thank the fans in Los Angeles and wish them the best.”
Bert Haanstra’s Glas is a short 10-minute documentary from 1958 about glass that won an Oscar. It’s a beautiful short that shows the art of glass blowing versus the character-less mechanism of automated glass bottle making machines. There’s no voice over, no narration, just beautiful scenes of glass being made. It’s like porn for manufacturing. Even while you don’t understand what’s going on, it’s lovely to see
Students at the Eindhoven University of Technology have developed a solar-powered car they call “Stella,” which is claimed to be the first-ever family car that runs off the sun. The vehicle is designed to seat four individuals, and utilizes power drawn from the sun via solar panels that are located on its roof. We have a video of it in action after the break.
As you can see in the image above, the car is very long, as well as short in terms of roof height, tapering down to a thin tail for aerodynamics. According to the students who created it, Stella is capable of traveling up to a distance of 600 kilometers, something that will be put to the test in Australia’s World Solar Challenge, which is a 3,000 kilometer race that starts in Darwin and goes all the way to Adelaide.
Stella is racing under the Cruiser Class category, which is a new addition to the event this year. For the new category, the solar car will be competing under different requirements than the other cars in the race, aiming for both usability and comfortable. As part of the category’s regulations, Stella will need to transport a passenger in addition to the driver for the duration of the race.
Said Solar Team Eindhoven: “The design of the car of the future has to meet the needs of modern consumers. The car must be capable of transporting a family from the Netherlands to France in one day, it needs to be suitable for the daily commute to work, and it needs to achieve all this in comfort. Since Solar Team Eindhoven wants to contribute to the development of a car of the future, the design demands more than just a focus on speed. Comfort, ease of use, and feasibility are all key terms.”
The car is made of both carbon and aluminium, and offers a dashboard composed of a touchscreen panel, eschewing typical button conventions. The steering wheel is said to also be unique, contracting and expanding depending on the speed the car is traveling at. As for the race itself, it will take place from October 6th to 13th.
Nintendo‘s latest annual shareholders meeting has proved to hold more than a couple interesting bits of information, such as confirmation that the company won’t be launching the Wii Vitality Sensor any time in the near future. Also talked about was E3 game announcements, and the revelation that the company intentionally failed to announcement certain games.
The information was stated by Nintendo boss Iwata, who stated during the meeting that the games left unannounced encompass “brand-new types of games,” rather than the expected Mario Kart 8 and Donkey Kong Country Returns: Tropical Freeze, among others, that were announced. This will come as a relief to those who found their expectations initially dashed by the announcements.
The reasons for such a decision? Nintendo wished to “satisfy existing video game fans first and provide new surprises later,” intending to make their impact more profound when they were announced while giving little means for competitors to rip them off. As such, the company elected to wait until it was closer to the games’ launch dates before making their existence known.
For this reason, we’re going to have to wait a considerable bit longer before finding out what Nintendo has up its sleeves – something to the tune of about 12 months. While this is a frustratingly long time for those who were expecting to get excited with Nintendo’s E3 Direct stream, the company assures fans that there’s a method to its madness, so to speak.
In case you missed it, Nintendo’s E3 presentation was a mere 41 minutes, far shorter than what we saw from Sony, for example. You can watch it for yourself to see what Nintendo did announce, then head over to the company’s website and read the long notes from its shareholders meeting, filling in the gaps with information straight from Nintendo’s President and CEO.
We’ve all said it or thought it or joked about it or believed it at one point in our lives. That damn, we were in the middle of nowhere. But that corn field or dark stretch of the highway hardly qualifies as nowhere. True nowhere is actually in Idaho.
Here comes another mini-tower desktop PC from Unitcom, the Lesance DT MN5110-i7-HLB. The system features a 3.40GHz Intel Core i7-4770 processor, an Intel B85 Express Chipset, an Intel HD Graphics 4600, a 4GB DDR3 RAM, a 500GB hard drive, a DVD Super Multi Drive and runs on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (SP1) OS. The Lesance DT MN5110-i7-HLB sells for $79,980 Yen (about $800). [Product Page]
Sony is set to launch a new line of USB 3.0 flash drives, the POCKET BIT USM-QX. Coming in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities, these high-speed flash drives feature a durable metal body, a knock slide USB 3.0 connector and can deliver a maximum transfer rate of 100MB/s (8GB Model), 200MB/s (16GB Model) and 226MB/s (32GB & 64GB Models), respectively. The 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models will begin shipping from July 20th for around $35, $60, $100 and $200, respectively. [Sony]
be quiet! has unveiled a new CPU cooler ‘Shadow Rock 2′ to its line-up. Supporting both Intel (LGA2011/1366/1156/1155/1150/775) and AMD (FM2/FM1/AM3(+)/AM2(+)/940/939/754) sockets, this side-flow type CPU cooler is packed with four 8mm heatpipes, an aluminum heatsink and a 120mm PWM fan that operates at 1600 RPM. Pricing info is still unknown at the moment. [be quiet!]
ASK Inc. Japan will release a new USB 3.0 external HDD enclosure ‘ZM-VE400′ from Zalman that comes bundled with an 8GB SSD from HANA Micron. This aluminum enclosure is equipped with a small LCD display, a large touch pad on the front of the case, a USB 3.0 connection interface, 256-bit AES hardware encryption support and can house a single 2.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD. The ZM-VE400 will go on sale soon for 9,980 Yen (about $99) in black and silver color options. [Product Page]
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