5 High-Quality Gaming Laptops Under $1,500

For the most dedicated gamers out there, a new gaming laptop can run from $1,500 to as much as $5,000. But having superior graphics and sound should not destroy you financially. Here are some high-quality gaming laptops that are under $1,500.
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ASUS ROG G751JL-DS71 17.3-Inch Gaming Laptop

Price: $1,199

Specifications: Latest NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M, 2GB GDDR5 Discrete Graphics,
Intel Core i7-4720HQ, 2.6GHz (turbo to 3.6GHz), 16 GB RAM (upgradable to 32 GB),
1000 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive (additional 2.5-inch bay to install secondary hard drive)

Why You Should Buy: This laptop has a sleek and clean design with a Blu-ray player, huge trackpad for your finger and game play, and a very high-quality ventilation system for long extended hours of play. Those looking for a high-quality laptop with high- and constant-resolution specs, this is a great buy.

Report: New iPhones Likely to Have Force Touch

The successors of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will have Force Touch capabilities. This news comes from a Bloomberg tech report.

“Force Touch was introduced with the Apple Watch, which launched earlier this year. The feature can judge the sensitivity of presses on the touchscreen, pulling up a variety of control options based on how lightly the user taps the device. During Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the company revealed it would be available on future Macbooks,” according to Brett Molina for USA Today.

This feature will come with the 6S and the 6S Plus. As of now the phone will have the same dimensions. The 6S will be 4.7 inches and the 6S Plus will be 5.5 inches big.

Essentially, the screen will be able to be adjusted to the pressure of the user’s finger. The apps will be able to be activated based on how hard or how soft users press on them.  For this reason, suppliers are having difficulty in providing the right screens.

“The timing and production volume of Force Touch-enabled phones could be impacted by the supply and yield of the displays,” reports Tim Culpan for Bloomberg.

At this point, the feature is already in many of Apple’s other products, so this move makes sense.

Game Time: The Top 5 Announcements from E3 2015

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Nintendo

This year’s E3 was not very good for the mega gaming company. There were some lukewarm reaction to its releases and to their presentations. However, there was a gem or two that emerged from the filth. Some of the big moments included the announcement of Platinum Games co-developing Star Fox Zero with Shigeru Miyamoto and Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Fans have been awaiting these two games but Metroid Prime: Federation Force for the 3DS has not been received well. The trailer has been destroyed since its release.

Source: Nintendo/Youtube

New PlayStation 4 Will Add 1TB of Storage to Already Powerful System

According to The Financial Express, the ‘Ultimate Player Edition’ PS4 comes with double storage, meaning 1TB, and will be released across Europe on July 15. There is no news on a wider release as of yet.

This new PS4 will be a direct response to Microsoft’s new Xbox One, which will also have more storage capacity. With the new storage, gamers can download games, save highlights, share experiences and extend play with more add-on content.

This announcement is just part of a slew of new products Sony is releasing in the next few months. The company will also release an updated 500GB model PS4 that will be slimmer and more energy efficient for those who are looking for an upgrade.

These two machines will more than likely be released stateside during the holiday shopping season.

Source: Sony/Youtube

If You Value Your Privacy, This New Facebook Feature is Not for You

This month, Facebook released its new product “Moments” during a time when online privacy has come under attack.

“If you’re unfamiliar, ‘Moments’ is one of Facebook’s sister apps for mobile devices. It works by burrowing into all the photos on your camera, and sorting them into discrete temporal events – that party, that bike trip, that office function – to create ‘Moments.’ The app then tags everyone it recognizes by comparing the faces in the photos to existing Facebook friends (your ‘social graph’ in tech parlance), and invites you to share the resulting ‘Moment’ with everyone tagged in the photo,” reports Jeff John Roberts for Fortune.

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This feature will change how everything works for online Facebook users. Because of the constant debate over privacy and the lack of strong laws that prevent social media sites and websites from tracking your location and creating ads suited to you, this  feature will not be welcomed with open arms.

In fact, Canada and many European nations have banned the tag feature. Those same countries will more than likely reject the “Moments” feature.  In Ireland, privacy watchdogs have noticed that the feature has only a default mode, meaning that users can’t decide to turn it on or off.

According to Slash Gear writer Chris Davies, “the social network claims more than 97-percent accuracy at identifying the right people, juggling in excess of 120m parameters as it builds 3D face models using a neural network. Last year, Facebook said it had trained the network using more than 4,000 people and in excess of four million images.”

The debate over the new app/feature is just getting started. “Moments” was released June 15 and it is available in the App Store and Google Play.

 

6 Out Of The Ordinary Inventions You Didn’t Know Actually Existed

fortis-exoskeleton-US-navy-designboom01Exoskeleton 

The U.S. military and the private sector have been developing super-strength-enabling exoskeletons for soldiers for decades now. In 2014, they became a reality. They were developed in a top-secret program called the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS). The goal of the program was to enhance a soldier’s speed, strength and stamina in the battlefield.

Military Tech and a 19th Century Engine Could Revolutionize Solar Energy

A new way solar energy will be harnessed could change how people worldwide get their electricity.

“In the remote Northern Cape province, huge mirrors reflect the sun across the brown Kalahari sand. This is the test site for Swedish company Ripasso, which is using the intense South African sun and local manufacturing know-how to develop their cutting-edge kit,” explains Jeffrey Barbee for The Guardian.

Work on the project began in 2011. The South African team is led by Jean-Pierre Fourie who has overseen the project in the extreme desert temperatures for four years.

The system works by taking sunlight that is directly hitting the satellite-dish-like apparatus and converting it into electricity. The 100-square-mile apparatus has solar panels that do the work. While most other solar energy generators with photovoltaic panels only get 23 percent to 25 percent of the sunlight, this machine gets 35 percent.

All of the sunlight is focused into one hot point that then turns the energy into electricity to power a 19th century engine created by Swedish inventor the Rev. Robert Stirling. The engine was created for steam-powered boats. Ripasso has been using updated models of the engine for submarines.

“The technology looks good to me. I’ve seen it working, and I believe it meets the efficiency goals. The technology is proven with years of performance in the navy,”  according to Paul Gauche, director of the Solar Thermal Energy Research Group at the University of Stellenbosch.

The problem with new tech is that it is very difficult to get funding from financial institutions. Ripasso will have to learn to adapt in order to continue this project.

5 New Cloaking Technologies Set to Make Invisibility a Reality in the Near Future

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Earthquake Cloaking Device

Technology can solve many things at this point, even earthquakes. The diagram above shows how scientists at the Institut Fresnel in Marseille, France, plan on stopping seismic energy. First, the vibroprobe shakes the ground – simulating an earthquake. Second, rows of hollow cylinders act as metamaterials (man-made materials) that will reflect the vibrations away from the important structure and make it “invisible” to the “earthquake.” The whole experiment will have acoustic sensors to measure how well this works.