Hasta La Gadget!

In what seems to be an unintentional response to our previous report surrounding the supposed rampant piracy on Android, another developer believes that the reverse is true. Chris Pruett, a developer for the popular game Wind-up Knight and founder of Robot Invader, said that the company’s piracy rate on the said game was about 12% on Android and about 15% on iOS. Pruett added that back when Wind-up Knight for iOS was a paid app, the piracy rate reportedly went 80%.

The developer also mentioned that roughly 100% of their pirate users on Android and iOS are in China. “I think piracy is, as always, a red herring. You can’t stop it, but as long as it’s slightly arduous, it’s not a lot of lost sales. Because a huge number of people who pirate software would never buy it in a million years,” Pruett explained. “You aren’t losing a sale to them. Piracy starts to matter only when pirate users can cost you money in other ways, e.g. network bandwidth and server cost. Yet another reason to be a free app in today’s mobile marketplace.”

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Android smartphone sales hit the jackpot with 888.8% jump, Android U.S market share declines, according to research,

If Doctor Evil ever lowered his lofty goal of sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads to something more manageable, such as lasers on frickin’ tadpoles, the world’s smallest laser might serve him well. Physicists from the University of Texas at Austin working with colleagues in Taiwan and China have created what they claim to be the world’s smallest laser. The laser is so small that it can’t be seen with the naked eye.

The laser is the world’s smallest semiconductor laser and is hailed as a breakthrough in the theoretical miniaturization of photonics technology. The researchers believe that the breakthrough could have applications for a number of real-world uses, including computing and medicine. The laser is made using gallium nitride on a nanoscale. The breakthrough called, subdiffraction nanolaser, based on surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, was detailed in the July 27 issue of Science.

The laser breakthrough has great potential to usher in a new era for electronics, in particular. The miniaturization of the semiconductor laser could lead to the development of faster, smaller, and lower energy photon-based electronics such as incredibly fast computer chips and medical sensors for detecting disease. The laser also has the potential for being used in communications.

“We have developed a nanolaser device that operates well below the 3-D diffraction limit,” says Chih-Kang “Ken” Shih, physics professor at The University of Texas at Austin. “We believe our research could have a large impact on nanoscale technologies.” The researcher’s breakthrough is the first continuous-wave low threshold laser below the 3-D diffraction limit, and the laser emits a green light. The laser is constructed of a gallium nitride nano-rod that is partially filled with indium gallium nitride, which are both alloys commonly used in the production of LEDs.

[via Techfragments]

Gallium nitride nano-scale laser is the world’s smallest is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s official – science has essentially proven, with a study, that Pop music is indeed both getting louder and diminishing in variety. A team of researchers in Spain headed by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra have run a set of songs from the last 50 years through a set of complex algorithms that have yielded the following results: Pop songs on the whole have become more bland in terms of chords, melodies, and types of sound, and are intrinsically louder to boot than they’ve ever been before.

With a gigantic archive known as the Million Song Dataset, the research group took audio and lyrical content and broke it down into crunchable data. From there they checked out how high the intrinsic loudness of the tracks were, for starters. Intrinsic Loudness can be explained as the common sound level that’s present in a song or a whole set of songs.

In the book “Mastering Audio: The Art and Science” by Bob Katz and Robert A Katz, they speak about this situation in short:

“In the days of the LP, the variation in intrinsic loudness of pop recordings was much more consistent, perhaps within as little as 4 gB. Even at the peak of the vinyl loudness race. I cloud put on a Simon and Garfunkel LP, or even a Led Zeppelin, and follow that with an audiophile direct-to-disk recording, barely having to adjust the monitor control to satisfy my ears.

In the earliest days of the compact disc, before the digital loudness race began, many master engineers would dub analog tabs with o VU set to -20 dBFS, and leave the headroom to the natural crest factor of the recording. It was not thought necessary to peak to full scale, and so the intrinsic loudness of early pop CDs was much more consistent. However, the inventors of the digital system abandoned the VU meter, which opened Pandora’s box.” – Mastering Audio: The Art and Science

A Volume Unit meter (VU meter) is a device that shows the signal level of the audio you’re playing. Most often, VU meters are used just for the lovely look of having your meters jumping around at peak – but they certainly can be useful in situations such as these to show how terribly loud everything has gotten.

“We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse. In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations – roughly speaking chords plus melodies – has consistently diminished in the last 50 years.” – Serra

Serra and her team also spoke with Rueters noting that the timbre palette in today’s Pop tunes has become less diverse over time. Louder and less diverse music for all, that’s what music is evolving into for the masses. Do your part and break out the vinyl, ladies and gentlemen!

Study shows Pop music all sounds the same is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

I think most of us have accepted the fact that one day robots will become so advanced that they’ll take over the planet and enslave mankind. But until that day comes, we’ve still got a good five or six years when we can mock their feeble attempts to imitate humans. “Haha! Way to climb the stairs like you’ve got chronic back pain jerk-bot!” (High-fives another awesome human.) More »

Sigma R&D has won first prize in a gesture challenge to show just how much more talent — like sign language translation and light saber fun — can be unlocked in a Kinect. Normally the Microsoft device can only scope body and full mitt movements, but the research company was able to track individual fingers with a Kinect or similar sensor, plus its custom software, allowing a user’s hand to become a more finely tuned controller. To prove it, the company introduced a virtual lightsaber to a subject, tracking his swordsmanship perfectly and using his thumb extension to turn it on and off. The system even detected when a passing gesture was made, seamlessly making a virtual transfer of the weapon. The same tech was also used to read sign language, displaying the intended letters on the screen for a quick translation. The SDK is due in the fall, when we can’t wait to finally get our hands on a Jedi weapon that isn’t dangerous or plasticky. To believe it for yourself, see the videos after the break.

Continue reading Sigma R&D shows Kinect sign language and Jedi savvy to win gesture challenge (video)

Filed under: Peripherals, Software

Sigma R&D shows Kinect sign language and Jedi savvy to win gesture challenge (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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