Hasta La Gadget!

This week at the 2013 Game Developer’s Conference a couple of mysterious trailers from the past few weeks have been combined by the folks at Kojima to create Metal Gear Solid V. This is the first time the game has been officially revealed as existing, while two trailers – “The Phantom Pain” and “Ground Zeroes” – were both actually part of a series of pieces leading up to this final first push. Metal Gear Solid V (or Metal Gear Solid 5, if you prefer), is loaded and ready for action.

What you’re seeing here is the trailer shown on-stage today courtesy of Hideo Kojima – the presenter at hand, mind you, was wearing a bandage around his head and a t-short that read “Phantom Pain” as he did so. None too subtle! If you don’t see it here already, you’ll soon be having a peek at some more gameplay as well.

As far as the title Ground Zeroes goes – that’s just another piece of the game’s plotline. According to TheSixthAxis, we’ll be seeing Ground Zeroes late in the game while The Phantom Pain will be a bit of a prologue sort of presentation. For those of you wondering, that’s actor (and again voice actor) Keifer Sutherland helping Snake out of the hospital, and the band Garbage doing the soundtrack we’re hearing thus far.

Here you’ll see The Phantom Pain as revealed at the 2012 Video Game Awards – remember and freak out accordingly!

Also be sure to remember the greatness that was – and will be – Ground Zeroes in its first trailer here:

Stay tuned as we find out more information than you can handle about this futuristic blast-fest and dive deeper into tapping on windows and walls than you’ll ever have wanted to go! Check the timeline below for more Metal Gear Solid action as well!

Metal Gear Solid V revealed: hard-hitting mega-title coming up! is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re the sort of geek who likes to tinker with all sorts of electronics products and projects, you may be familiar with the Raspberry Pi developer board. This little mini-computer/developer board sells for $35 and has basic hardware allowing you to create a huge number of different projects. The board features a 700 MHz processor, integrated GPU, and can boot from a SD card.

The model A the device features 256 MB of RAM while the newer model B features 512 MB. The little developer board also has a single USB 2.0 port and more. The problem some geeks who want to integrate the Pi into their projects run into is a lack of features to do the job they want.

The Raspberry Pi can be fitted with a wide array of new features via the RasPiComm extension board. The extension board adds additional ports, a real-time clock, and a five-way joystick input device. The new ports include a RS-485 port allowing for control of stepper motors and other objects. The extension board also has an RS-232 port as well as a real-time clock with a battery backup.

Other features of the board include a direct I2C connector allowing the user to directly connect a display or sensors. The five-way joystick input makes it easier to control the Raspberry Pi. All of those features are packed into a very small piggyback board requiring no additional cables. The extension board also has full API support including drivers for an OLED display, advanced stepper motor control, and a daemon mode allowing you to control the extension board via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. The extension board is available now for €43.69.

[via Amescon]

RasPiComm extension board adds new features to the cheap Raspberry Pi is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the folks at Lenovo have revealed the ThinkCentre Edge 62z, an all-in-one machine that allows the user to work in a compact space, have computing power, and only pay a few hundred bucks for the pleasure of it. With the ThinkCentre Edge 62z you’ll be tossing down $549 USD and you’ll be getting an 18.5-inch LCD display with computing guys all in one package. This is your next desktop computer.

This machine is not the kind of beast you’re going to be gaming on. Nor is it the computer you’re going to want to give to your niece so she can impress her friends. Instead this is the computer you’ll get for your school library or one you’ll have at the workplace for word processing and office display action.

The ThinkCentre Edge 62z’s display is able to be mounted to the wall or sat on a desk – with included attached stand, of course. You’ll find this machine packed with 3rd Gen Intel Core i3 processors for the low end of high power – this is the most recent generation of Intel processors, but there are also Core i5 and Core i7 models that ramp up by a considerable amount with each step. You’ll also find six USB 2.0 ports for plugging in so many keyboards, mice, and external hard-drives that you won’t know what to do with them all.

Each of these units is ENERGY STAR 5 compliant and works with the EuP 2013 energy efficiency requirement “by consuming less than 0.5 Watts of electricity when turned off.” How about that? This machine will be available starting in May 2013 wherever fine Lenovo products are sold.

Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 62z All-in-One gets compact and budget friendly is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Texas Instruments is a major technology company that develops chips and internal components for a variety of gadgets and electronic devices on the market today. The company has announced a new lithium-ion battery charger and integrated circuit that promises significantly faster charging compared to other solutions on the market today. The new Texas Instruments product is the bq2419x family of 4.5-amp output, 20-V input-rated switch-mode chargers.

The new integrated circuit has an I2C interface and supports USB OTG. Texas Instruments promises that its new integrated circuit not only delivers faster charging, but delivers cooler charging to a wide range of products including power banks and packs, 4G LTE routers, Wi-Fi speakers, portable medical devices, smartphones, tablets, and more. TI says that its new integrated circuit will reduce charge time by 50% for smartphones and tablets compared to other charging solutions.

The new integrated circuit has a 4.5-amp output and a 20-volt input. The integrated circuit has a unique battery pack with impedance compensation that enables significantly reduced charging time. The solution also achieves 92% efficiency at 2 A and up to 90% efficiency at four amps output current.

The new integrated circuit also has a programmable thermal regulation temperature allowing designers to improve their system-level design. The circuit also promises the industry’s lowest on-resistance of 12 milliohms to extend the battery runtime. The circuit is also designed to prevent overcharging and it’s very small with TI saying it is the smallest and most integrated battery charging solution available with its feature set measuring 4 mm x 4 mm. There’s no indication of when products using this new integrated circuit will come to market.

[via TI]

Texas Instruments 4.5-amp lithium-ion battery charging circuit cuts charge time is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Should you happen to be playing the widely applauded BioShock Infinite game this week with a machine with the graphics power of NVIDIA’s GeForce under the hood, you’ll also find game-optimized drivers available to you for download. These drivers have ben sent out to the public along with notes about how they’ll destroy your concept of what looks best graphics-wise. If you thought this game looked great before, you’re in for a real trip.

NVIDIA is notorious for being up-to-date with the newest biggest baddest games on the market, releasing software for the graphics cards they’ve got out in the wild so that you can have the best experience you could possibly hope for. What we’re seeing with the NVIDIA GeForce family of GPUs here in 2013 is a big drive for NVIDIA-pushed optimization, especially with services such as the GeForce Experience. At the moment we’re seeing NVIDIA release a massive amount of information on this release specifically, showing the undeniable power of optimization on a variety of systems.

What you’re seeing here is the game being tested on four different resolutions and setups, each of them running on Rampage IV Extreme, i7-3960X clocked at 3.3GHz with 8GB of RAM under the hood. It should be mighty clear that you’ll want to update your drivers to GeForce 314.22 WHQL as quick as possible, even on GPUs not listed here.

NVIDIA has also shown the difference in performance for such games as the new Tomb Raider. You’ll find here that the change is just as impressive, changing the frames per second by levels of 10 with ease. These games are two in a collection of games the team has tested and optimized, with this particular driver update hitting the following:

In addition to the BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider optimizations, 314.22 WHQL also includes performance improvements for Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Civilization V, Sleeping Dogs, Sniper Elite V2, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Good deal! You’ll find this update available to you today in an over-the-air update – automatic! You can also go ahead and download the GeForce Experience for your machine to get the update with a click of a button – make it happen! These drivers can also be downloaded at the GeForce Homepage where all great driver downloads are housed.

BioShock Infinite drivers blast forth for NVIDIA GeForce GPU is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.