The NYPD Will Give Smartphones to Its Officers

As part of the NYPD Mobility Initiative, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Friday that the 35K officers of the NYPD will all be receiving smartphones and police cruisers will be fitted with tablets. Welcome to the 21st Century, NYPD.

The touchscreen devices issued to cops will be connected to a cellular network, which will give officers in the field "expanded search capabilities," which simply means they can more easily search NYPD databases on the go.

Comments

Assassin’s Creed Unity PC Specs

Ubisoft has just released the minimum and recommended specs for the PC to enjoyably play the upcoming release of Assassin’s Creed Unity.

Comments

PlayStation’s Sale of the Dead

Sony is celebrating Halloween by offering discounts on PlayStation scary games just in time for the Halloween festivities. The discounts range from 65-80% and the promotion will run through November 3rd.

Many of the best games are a couple of years old, so if you missed them the first time round, now is the time to pick them up for practically nothing.

Comments

7 Cool Secrets in the Game 'Destiny' and How to Find Them

It’s not even remotely close to spring yet, but Bungie has already been out there hiding the Easter Eggs in their mega-hit game, Destiny. Bungie has hidden seven Easter Eggs and now you will know just how to locate them.

Comments

Happy 10th Birthday Ubuntu, Canonical Releases Utopic Unicorn

If you are expecting fireworks and Champagne, you are out of luck. Canonical celebrated the ten year anniversary of Ubuntu by releasing a new version, 14.10, also known as Utopic Unicorn.

If you’d like to try out Ubuntu 14.10 for yourself, you can head on over to the release page, and pick out whichever flavor best suits your needs.

Comments

Microsoft Is Killing Xbox Music’s Free Music Streaming

Microsoft has served notice that it will be shutting down its free version of the Xbox Music streaming service as of December 1st. The music service will continue on as a paid subscription.

With Xbox Music Pass, you have access to millions of songs on your PC, tablet, Xbox, phone, and the web.

Comments

First Trailer for Ridley Scott's 'Halo' Series Full of Sci-Fi Tropes

Halo: Nightfall, a five episode live action series produced by Ridley Scott (Aliens, Blade Runner) is set to be released on November 11th as part of the Master Chief Collection. Microsoft has released the full trailer this week as a promotion and to introduce you to a brand new character.

Comments

Stephen Hawking Joins Facebook

If you are a fan of Stephen Hawking, you can now follow him on his new Facebook page. He will be sharing his insight into the universe with all to see on his page and it’s a sure bet his presence on Facebook will not hurt his upcoming biopic release one little bit.

Time and space may forever be a mystery, but that has not stopped my pursuit. Our connections to one another have grown infinitely and now that I have the chance, I’m eager to share this journey with you.

Comments

PS4 Update 2.0 Available Next Week

Last week we told you about the upcoming PS4 update in detail, leaving out the answer to one important question: When will it be available? Sony has finally filled in the last detail for Masamune, the codename for firmware update, version 2.0.

Masamune will also bring with it the long-awaited Share Play feature. Share Play will create an online local co-op experience by allowing you to invite a friend to join your game, even when they don’t own a copy of it.

Comments

AMD APU Price Cuts and Bundles for October

Price cuts galore: AMD is dealing! AMD has announced price cuts in many of their APU products, averaging $20-$30 off and will soon be reflected in the pricing at AMD retailers.

Besides the price drops, AMD is also announcing a gaming bundle through the end of October for their A10 APUs.

Comments

Apple Computer Built by The Woz Sells for $905K

I always wondered that when Steve Wozniak was building those crude piecemeal Apple-1 computers in Steve Jobs family garage, did he ever think they would be worth more than the going price for them in 1976? Even if he did, it’s doubtful that he ever envisioned one of them going for the record price of $905K and ending up in the Henry Ford Museum.

Comments

Roku Could File for IPO Soon, Raise as Much as $150 Million

Roku, the little box and dongle that has been a savior to the cord-cutters and a curse on cable companies, looks to be posturing to go the IPO route in the near future according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Roku is facing increased competition from Google and Amazon, and it will have to prove to investors that the company can still grow its traditional device business, and score in the TV space, even as it competes with Chromecast, Fire TV and Android TV.

Comments

Surface Pro 2 Quietly Disappears from the Microsoft Store

Microsoft has turned its stores into magical places and the sales representatives into magicians this week, giving them all the ability to make the Surface Pro 2 disappear completely.

After poking around a bit and using the sales chat function, the representative said that the Surface Pro 2 is no longer for sale on the site and that's about all there is to say.

Comments

'Titanfall' to Add New Co-Op Game Mode

Respawn Entertainment announced the release of a new co-operative mode for Titanfall this week called Frontier Defense. Calling this the biggest update so far, it will allow four players to work together against A.I. opponents. Check out the video for a complete walkthrough.

Comments

Court Shuts Down Aereo’s Live TV Feature

Broadcasters 1, Aereo Zip. In what could be Aereo’s final attempt at using the Supreme Court’s decision to its advantage, Aereo has been barred by a federal judge from rebroadcasting over-the-air live programming.

The court ordered that Aereo be forbidden from streaming, transmitting, retransmitting, or otherwise publicly performing any Copyrighted Program over the Internet or by means of any device or process throughout the United States of America, while the Copyrighted Programming is still being broadcast.

Comments

Paul Allen Pledges $100 Million in Fight Against Ebola

Bill Gates is not the only big time philanthropist in the Microsoft organization. Responding to the Ebola crisis in Africa, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has donated a whopping $100 Million dollars to treat and stop the disease from spreading.

Allen's pledge far surpasses the amount of money that has been raised by a United Nations fund to fight Ebola set up by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which last week totaled only $100,000.

Comments

[H]ard|OCP Week in Reviews

Today is Friday and you know what that means! It is time once again for the [H]ard|OCP Week in Reviews! For anyone that might have missed them, we like to take a quick look back on the hardware evaluations and articles we posted earlier in the week. We kicked the week off with our evaluation of the Corsair HX1000i 1000W power supply, followed by our XFX Radeon R9 285 Black Edition video card review. Finally, we wrapped up the week with a look at the SilverStone Fortress FT05.

[H]ardware Round-Up II

In Win D-Frame Mini

If you like the looks of the original D-Frame (our review here) but want a much smaller footprint, this review of the In Win D-Frame Mini should be right up your alley.

Of all the weird and wonderful cases we saw in 2013, In Win's D-Frame remains most memorable. The D-Frame Mini takes the original design and shrinks it down to accommodate the now popular Mini-ITX form factor. Despite the reduction in size the case can now support cooling radiators and models as large as 240mm, the graphics card length has been extended from 330mm to 340mm, and the chassis can rest on one of six sides rather than just two.

Comments

Windows Update Drivers Bricking USB Serial Chips

What's the easiest way to tell if you have counterfeit chips in your computer? Use Windows Update.

Hardware hackers building interactive gadgets based on the Arduino microcontrollers are finding that a recent driver update that Microsoft deployed over Windows Update has bricked some of their hardware, leaving it inaccessible to most software both on Windows and Linux.

Comments

Intel X99 Motherboard Goes Up in Smoke

As a computer enthusiast, I can honestly say there is nothing worse than this smell. Nothing good has ever immediately followed the smell of burnt electronics.

This morning I woke up bright and early to benchmark some DDR4 memory kits and found myself waking up not to Folgers in your cup, but the smell of burnt electrical after loading the XMP profiles on a memory kit and restarting the system. Let me tell you what happened, the best I can.

Comments

Will Destiny Survive CoD And Halo?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the release of Halo: The Master Chief Collection and the next installment in the CoD franchise are going to kick Destiny in its MMO-wannabe nuts....hard.

The Master Chief collection brings with it time-tested PVP with far more customization options, Call of Duty brings with it a fresh take on a game with a well-established fan base, and Far Cry 4 brings with it strong, varied single player. All of them will almost definitely have campaigns that make Destiny’s samey slog look foolish.

Comments

Google Senior VP Falls 26 Miles, Lives To Tell The Tale

It looks like a new world record has been set for falling from really high places.

A well-known computer scientist parachuted from a balloon near the top of the stratosphere on Friday, falling faster than the speed of sound and breaking the world altitude record set just two years ago. The jump was made by Alan Eustace, 57, a senior vice president at Google. At dawn he was lifted by a balloon filled with 35,000 cubic feet of helium, from an abandoned runway at the airport here.

Comments

Quantum Break Demo Walkthrough

Those of you looking forward Quantum Break should check out this sixteen minute gameplay video posted today by the folks at Remedy Entertainment.

Comments

Video Game Developers: What To Do When You Are Laid Off

GameDevTalk has a handy check list of things you should know and things you should do if you've been laid off from your job in the game industry.

I’ve been working as an animator since 1998, and I’ve been laid off from studios of all sizes. I’ve even done some layoffs of my own. I’m still standing and still making games. There’s life after layoff. What do you do if you’re on receiving end of a layoff? Don’t freak out! It’s a very common thing in the videogame industry, much too common.

Comments

Gaming [H]eadlines

SilverStone Fortress FT05

We have just posted our evaluation of the SilverStone Fortress FT05. If you are in the market for a new enclosure, you definitely do not want to miss this review.

The SilverStone Fortress FT05 is a different take on it successful Raven RV05. SilverStone has gotten rid of the 5.25" drive bays and once again rotated the motherboard 90 degrees so that the IO panel points toward the sky. These two things done in tandem allow SilverStone to produce a much better engineered ATX case.

Comments

Why Is This Kickstarter Tanking?

I don't know, maybe people are just a little burned out on Kickstarter right now?

The Black Glove sounds like a game we’d love to play: A surreal first-person adventure from some of the people who made BioShock. But its Kickstarter campaign isn’t working out. Even though it’s had a great deal of publicity, it’s only raised about 20 percent of its $550,000 fundraising goal.

Comments

[H]ardware Round-Up