Tokyo’s FabCafe is a creator space dedicated to laser-cutting, 3D-printing and other things that give off the faint smell of burnt plastic and hardboard. It also just held its annual Halloween Party, but this year decided to add a new element: 3D-printed costumes. The “GRUE” projected accepted costume and headwear designs over the last month and a half (see some entries here), and then proceeded to print them out over the last few days. The results are pretty broad, but most of them share a common theme, aside from them all being spun out of a machine — they’re all white. Most were also pretty heavy — and they’re not really the kind of costumes you can wear a long time. Things get warm inside. We took a peek behind the preparation, and then got dressed up to attend.
We’ve seen our share of 3D printers ’round these parts, but the iBox Nano could be one of the smallest yet. Its creators claim that the gizmo is not only the most diminutive resin printer, but also the most affordable in addition to being the word’s quietest and lightest 3D printer to date. It achieves these bullet points in a few ways, namely by using LEDs instead of a DLP bulb for light (cuts down on size and noise) and acrylic parts for the actual printer body. The end result is a box measuring 4 x 3 x 8 inches and weighing in at three pounds. What’s with going small, though? Well, the inventors say that, statistically, folks who buy bigger (and costlier) 3D printers tend to only print smaller objects anyway — this is a matter of calculated efficiency.
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Let’s say that nostalgia got the better of you and you downloaded the refreshed GTA: San Andreas on Xbox 360 to replay a few missions ahead of GTA:V‘s new-gen re-release. You know, the tale of the Grove Street Families that now supports 720p resolution and achievements. Well, the tech-minded folks at Digital Foundry have done some digging and found that the HD version actually bears more than a passing resemblance to the game’s recent Android offering, as opposed to, say, a port of the original PC release. What you get here has better draw distance than the one on Google’s mobile OS, but, for the most part, little else in the way of enhancements. Instead, there’s apparently quite a bit of stuttering in-game, there are visual effects missing that even the PlayStation 2 release had too, in addition to cutscenes where audio drops out completely.
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Ready to catch up on all the juiciest tech news from the past seven days? Of course you are! Read on for all of our biggest highlights, including the Nexus 6, HP’s 3D-scanning all-in-one, and the Amazon Fire TV Stick. Oh, and be sure to subscribe to our Flipboard magazine!
Samsung was quick to cite the acquisition of Nokia as a reason for holding out on Microsoft’s royalty payments, but there weren’t many details. Just what had it spooked? Thanks to some new court filings, we now have a clearer sense of its motivations. Simply put, the Korean tech giant is worried about “charges of collusion” now that Microsoft is a direct competitor in the smartphone business. The patent deal requires that Samsung not only make Windows Phones, but hand over sensitive business details — both big problems when Microsoft could use them to gain a competitive edge. Samsung already stopped handing over those trade secrets over jitters that American antitrust regulators would step in.
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As handy as services like AirDrop or Android Beam may be for shuffling content between nearby devices, they’re platform-exclusive. That’s not much help if you want to share photos from your Android phone to an iPhone, or vice versa. However, Google may soon overcome that barrier. Android Police, Techaeris and GigaOM all have evidence of Copresence, a service that would let Android and iOS devices swap content over WiFi. Reportedly, it uses location data (including Bluetooth) to set up the connection; after that, you can send directions, photos and other info without having to either bump devices or rely on cloud storage options like Google Drive or Dropbox. The technique shouldn’t require a Google account, either.
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We’ve all heard of Google Glass. And smartwatches, and fitness bands, and gadgets that form some sort of combination thereof. But have you considered a skirt with embedded sensors? How about a purse, or a pair of socks? While a few companies, like Ralph Lauren, are dabbling in high-tech clothes, Becky Stern has been tinkering in the space for nearly a decade. As the director of wearables for the DIY electronics site Adafruit, she hosts weekly instructional videos on how to build your own wearables, and also stars in a YouTube show on the subject. We’ll be sitting down with her at our free Expand event on November 7th, where we’ll talk about the do’s and don’ts of wearable tech, with a nod toward some of the more unusual things you can do with sensors. (Fine, fine, we’ll touch on Android Wear and the Apple Watch too, if it makes you happy.) To whet your appetite, here’s a short Q&A with Stern, and sound off in the comments if you think there’s anything else we should ask.
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You typically expect the latest smartphones to represent clear steps forward over their predecessors. However, I’ve been hearing a lot of people characterize the LG G3 as a baby step ahead of the G2, or even a step backward. That had me more than a little worried. Was I going to hate the follow-up to one of my favorite phones from 2013? There was only one way to find out, so I spent a few weeks with the G3 to see if those fears were overblown.
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The new version of Gmail for Android is slated to make its way to Google Play in the near future, but if you cannot wait to use it, you can download the APK right now and load it up. You’ll notice some major changes the moment you launch it, since it’ll ask what kind of email addresses you’d like to add: version 5 works not only with Gmail addresses, but also with Outlook, Yahoo and any IMAP- or Exchange-based email accounts. To choose the inbox you want to check, simply tap one of your accounts on the left-hand menu. Also, it comes with a Material Design interface makeover (there’s a lot more red now) and a thread email system similar to what you get through Inbox. We can’t say which Android flavors it’s compatible with exactly, but we’ve installed it on an Ice Cream Sandwich tablet, so it’ll likely work with all newer platforms. To find out for yourself, or to take a break from Google’s busy Inbox app, head over to Android Police to download the file.
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Why Hollywood Loves ‘Interstellar’ Director Christopher Nolan
by Ben Fritz,
The Wall Street Journal
Folks in Hollywood seem to trust director Christopher Nolan to crank out films that’ll grab box office bucks. His latest effort, Interstellar, hits movie theaters next week, and it cost a whopping $165 million to make. According to The Wall Street Journal‘s Ben Fritz, the last non-franchise film to shell out that much was Nolan’s 2010 film Inception. The filmmaker seems to get whatever he needs to craft his movies, with the trust that he’ll keep his streak of success going.
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