Enigma Battleship Is Probably the Best Drinking Game Ever [Games]

The Enigma Battleship Drinking Game—a classic Battleship game that makes you drink a shot of your favorite alcohol every time you take a hit—is the last thing I need now, while I’m back visiting friends in Madrid.

And still, I want it so badly. It was designed by the genius of Mauricio (Tony) Harion, from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. A place that I hope to visit soon, just to play it this game with this man, who I’m sure will be a future Nobel Prize. Hasbro, come on, get your act together and license this ASAP. And with ASAP I mean right now. [Coroflot]

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Cheap, Thin Laptops Suffering From Cheapness, Thinness [Notebooks]

The new litter of thin, cheap laptops, as we’ve seen from Lenovo and Dell, is inherently charming, making the experience of using a cheap, portable laptop bearable for people put off by netbook tininess. There’s just one problem.

CNET caught up with Doug Freedman, an analyst for AmTech who has been speaking to device manufacturers:

Early production units being built in plastic, with the bottom case being plastic, are cracking…So, to get that really thin form factor that they’re after, they’re probably going to have to go with a metal case.

The obvious issue here is that they can’t go with a metal case, or else they’ll almost certainly cease to be “budget” laptops. As Mark noted in his review, the MSI X340—on the high end of this particular category already—suffered from an alarming flimsiness. Switching the case to aluminum would solve this problem; it would also push the laptop’s price even closer to the MacBook Air, effectively eliminating its entire reason for existence.

To be fair, most of the laptops announced in the category haven’t even started shipping yet, and problems like this could conceivably be conquered with some clever industrial design wizardry. Sometimes, though, there’s a reason a particular product niche—especially an obvious one like this—hasn’t been cracked before. [CNET]

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Psystar Emerges From Bankruptcy With New Product, Same Insane Resolve [Psystar]

In what is probably the most surprising non-celebrity-death story in weeks, recently bankrupt Psystar—surly maker of all things hackintosh—is now claiming to be ready for a comeback, with a new product in tow. This makes very little sense.

A superquick recap: Psystar releases the OpenMac, a $400 desktop Mac clone; people debate if this is possible, technically or legally, and if Psystar is a scam; the hackintoshes turn out to be real; they ship; Apple gets upset; Psystar grandstands; Apple continues to be upset; Psystar gets murdered. To death.

That was the story a few weeks ago, at least. Now Psystar is basically acting like nothing happened, releasing a fresh bootloader, a new computer—the $1500, i7-based Open(7) desktop—and revisiting their old, defiant tone in an email newsletter:

As you all may already be aware in late May, Psystar filed for bankruptcy protection. Although this was critical to our continued daily operations, we are now ready to emerge and again battle Goliath.

The whole thing is reproduced below, and definitely worth reading.

Psystar’s been subject to all manner or canonization, criticism, popular support and backlash, but now I don’t know what to think. On the one hand, all their talk about monopolies, freedom and victimization always stuck me as a little hollow. (David and Goliath? So you’re going to kill Apple?) On the other, it now appears as though the guys who run Psystar are either clinically insane, extremely persistent, unusually ballsy or just poorly advised to an extreme. Or all of the above. As Mark said on the story, “they wont stop unless Apple cuts off their hands. And even then, who knows.” That spirit alone has got to be worth something, right? [TUAW via Neowin via Slashgear]

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Verizon Does an About Face, Offers BlackBerry Tour to Existing Customers [Verizon]

Behold, the power of bad press! Verizon is now set to offer pre-orders of the upcoming BlackBerry Tour to existing customers in the very near future.

While yesterday had Verizon reps telling us that the Tour would only be available to new customers or Verizon customers at the end of their contracts, the site has since been updated:

Existing customers will be able to upgrade or purchase the BlackBerry Tour on this site very soon. Please check back with us tomorrow.

There we go, that makes a lot more sense. [Verizon via Boy Genius Report]

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Cheap, Thin Laptops Suffering From Cheapness, Thinness [Notebooks]

The new litter of thin, cheap laptops, as we’ve seen from Lenovo and Dell, is inherently charming, making the experience of using a cheap, portable laptop bearable for people put off by netbook tininess. There’s just one problem.

CNET caught up with Doug Freedman, an analyst for AmTech who has been speaking to device manufacturers:

Early production units being built in plastic, with the bottom case being plastic, are cracking…So, to get that really thin form factor that they’re after, they’re probably going to have to go with a metal case.

The obvious issue here is that they can’t go with a metal case, or else they’ll almost certainly cease to be “budget” laptops. As Mark noted in his review, the MSI X340—on the high end of this particular category already—suffered from an alarming flimsiness. Switching the case to aluminum would solve this problem; it would also push the laptop’s price even closer to the MacBook Air, effectively eliminating its entire reason for existence.

To be fair, most of the laptops announced in the category haven’t even started shipping yet, and problems like this could conceivably be conquered with some clever industrial design wizardry. Sometimes, though, there’s a reason a particular product niche—especially an obvious one like this—hasn’t been cracked before. [CNET]

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Alternating Tread Stair Looks Painful If You Slip [Architecture]

Not only can you possibly slip off the side and cut a gash in your face on these crazy tread stairs, you could slip and fall crotch first onto the middle bar.

Very useful for keeping fatties off the 2nd floor, as well as making sure your children NEVER RUN UP THE STAIRS. That is, if you’re still viable to have children after all those accidents. [Costel21d via Treehugger]

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Designed for search and rescue missions - which, let’s face it, are only ever one loose word away from “search and destroy” - the SCRATCHbot uses its whiskers to detect disaster survivors in inhospitable or dangerous areas. The Bristol Robotics Laboratory developed the rat-inspired people searcher over the past 6 years and now hopes to find interest for it in underground and underwater projects where vision may be impaired. Far less heroic uses are also being contemplated, such as textile inspection and implementation inside intelligent vacuum cleaners that would be able to adjust their cleaning to the particular surface they sense. Video of the new bot coming to life is after the break.

Continue reading Video: SCRATCHbot hunts like a rat for those trapped like one

Filed under: Robots

Video: SCRATCHbot hunts like a rat for those trapped like one originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via [Engadget]

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NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009

NVIDIA obviously isn’t doing much talking about it itself just yet, but Fudzilla apparently has it on good authority that the company is indeed already hard at work on Ion 2, which promises to bring with it plenty of improvements over the already impressive Ion chipset. Chief among those is a decreased die size, “much faster graphics,” and more than twice the shaders of the original Geforce 9400M /MCP79 chipset that the current Ion is based on (which uses 16 shaders). Not many more details than that, unfortunately, but NVIDIA is supposedly looking to launch Ion 2 by the end of this year — although not before it sells plenty more Ion 1s, of course.

[Via SlashGear]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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