Tag: electronic
The Electronic Wireless Show podcast S2 Episode 12: remember movies? They’re back! In game form…
Over the last few weeks we at the RPS Electronic Wireless Show podcast have noticed a slight resurgence in a trend we thought was basically over. That’s right: video game tie-ins to films! There used to be loads of them, and now there aren’t. Except there are again, culminating in Renfield (of all movies) having a Vampire Survivorslike you can actually buy on actual Steam. What’s going on? Is this marking the start of something new? What are some of our favourite game tie ins?
Plus we put the boot in on a couple of Tweets about the Mario movie, because why not, frankly.
Better Electronic Sensors Mean Militaries Need Better Camouflage
Thanks to innovations such as fractal colouration patterns, which mimic nature by repeating shapes at different scales, the distance from which naked eyes can quickly spot soldiers wearing the best camouflage has shrunk, by one reckoning, by a fifth over the past two decades. That is impressive. On today’s battlefields, however, it is no longer enough to merely hide from human eyes.
People and kit are given away as well by signals beyond the visual spectrum, and devices that detect these wavelengths are getting better, lighter and cheaper. Thermal sensors are a case in point. Today, one that costs about $1,000 and weighs as little as five sachets of sugar can, in good weather, detect a warm vehicle as far off as 10km. As Hans Kariis, deputy head of signatures research at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, notes, that is well beyond the range at which a small drone would be spotted. Two decades ago, he adds, a less sensitive thermal sensor weighing a kilogram cost ten times as much.
And then there’s automatic target-detection software, the article points out, like the Kestrel software deployed in more than 3,500 aircraft around the world, which “scans feeds of visual, infrared and radar data, and places red boxes around people and other potential targets, even as their positions in the frame move.” And the threat has only increased with the arrival of satellite-based synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) imagery.
But then the article lists examples of new camouflage that now tricks electronic sensors:
Military vehicles affix hexagon-shaped sheets that can be cooled with electricity to blend into the temperature of their surroundings.
Camouflage netting that absorbs (some) incoming radar beams with semi-conducting polymers while reducing heat signatures with insulation — and reflecting back the cooler temperature of the ground.
Netherlands-based TNO makes “battery-powered sniper suits” embedded with 500 LEDs that match the luminosity and color of the surroundings using real-time data from a helmet camera.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Electronic Wireless Show podcast S2 Ep9: modder, where art thou?
As is fast becoming a thing on RPS this week, Alice Bee and James are both away this week, so I’m filling in writing this post and doing my best Alice impression in the process. In this week’s episode, The Electronic Wireless Show podcast talks all things mods – specifically, the ones that got real big and broke out from their respective source games. It’s a chat that’s been prompted by the developers behind Slay The Spire mod Downfall announcing their own brand-new game, Tales & Tactics.
There’s also a lot of undead fish chat, and Alice’s plans for entertaining herself on an upcoming long-haul flight. And in James’ hardware corner, the gang chat about Nvidia’s comments on AI and crypto, as well as Ubisoft’s AI writing software tool thinger.
Electronic Arts are laying off 6% of employees in a new “restructuring”
Electronic Arts has become the latest tech company to suffer mass layoffs. Today the publisher announced a new “restructuring” which will impact roughly 6% of their total workforce, or over 700 employees if an SEC filing from March 2022 is any estimate.
Electronic Arts lays off hundreds of workers despite strong profits
6% workforce will be impacted
Electronic Arts is laying off 6% of its workforce
The Electronic Wireless Show podcast S2 Ep 8: what the hap is heckening at Studio ZA/UM?
This week on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we bite off more than we can chew by trying to make sense of the timeline of the Studio ZA/UM firings, lawsuits, and alleged fraud/toxicity, an ongoing and complicate mess that, as of this week, shows no signs of ungoing. We kind of end up on an “who tf knows?” but do manage to boil it down into a cowboy metaphor that helps us get a grip on things.
We talk about all that stuff for so long that we end up overrunning and don’t have time for A Good Day To Ware Hard, or Nate’s Tower Of Jocularity – although he promises a titanic one next week. We do get in our what games we’ve been playing this week, and it’s a varied selection.
Britain launches electronic revolution amid fears of war between China and Taiwan
The Electronic Wireless Show podcast S2 Ep 7: failure to launch
We had a couple of juicy news bits this week about disappoint – nay, heartbreaking – launch woes, so we thought we’d engage in every dev’s nightmare by talking about bad launches on The Electronic Wireless Show podcast. What are some of the bad launches we remember? What part do we play in this ecosystem? Are we just doomed to get bad PC ports for the next few years, or is this going to happen forever now.
Plus, a terrifying Tower Of Jocularity that challenges us to know when games came out (we do quite well, I think), the games we’ve been playing right now, and a trio of movie recommendations.