Image courtesy of NASA Back in February, NASA's Perseverance rover landed on the surface of Mars . Perseverance is equipped with all sorts of amazing tools and gadgets - including the first ever Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity . Originally, the helicopter was scheduled to attempt its first flight early Monday morning, but data that NASA scientists received late last week have caused them to postpone the flight to no earlier than April 14th (that's today - wonder if ...
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel! Vaccinations are rolling out and we’re all one step closer to being back together in person at the office. I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say that we’ve missed each other so much. We’re still not quite ready to gather in person yet, so we’ve been taking our game nights online for the last year or so. A couple Fridays ago, we hosted an online trivia night using Discord. We offered a $20 Am...
The USS Johnston - photo courtesy of Caladan Oceanic This week, in "science is cool," the main section of a ship that sunk 77 years ago during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II has been discovered off of the Philippine coast. Resting over 4 miles beneath the surface, the USS Johnston is the deepest shipwreck ever to be investigated. The 376-foot long Fletcher- class destroyer was discovered in the Philippine Trench near Samar Island at a depth of 21,...
I absolutely love a good joke. As long as the joke doesn’t hurt or disparage someone, I’m 100% for April Fools' pranks. While some corners of the internet are to be avoided on April 1st, I personally always look forward to some of the funny prank products that game and tech companies come up with for that day. I got curious about the origins of April Fools' Day, so I did a bit of searching online and found a few different accounts. The most credible explanation of it...
I've been a Windows user for a long time. Admittedly, that's rather by default - Windows was what came with my family's first PC and is the most accessible OS for most consumers, so it's obviously a fairly natural choice. It's been interesting to see Windows evolve over the years, although I, like many others, abhorred some of the changes (let's just ignore Windows Vista, shall we?). Back in October, Microsoft announced a new "Device Usage" feature they were working on for a future W...
One of the most common questions I think I get about the Multiplicity software is: why are there 3 versions and what the heck is the difference between them? It’s a fair question - one that I also had personally when I started learning about our software - and I’m here to help answer it. A while back, I wrote up a guide to setting up Multiplicity KM . Multiplicity KM is the version that is included in Object Desktop, and lets you control 2 PCs with a single keyboard and mo...
I normally don’t mind change. Change means progress, new and exciting experiences, interesting people, and so on. Change is good! Unless it’s your Start menu. Look, I spent a lot of time on Windows 7. I skipped Windows 8 entirely. So when Windows 10 came around and handed me a brand new Start menu (not to mention a bunch of other new stuff that I wasn’t used to), I wasn’t a huge fan. Like it or not, though, I’m a Windows user and I’m pretty mu...
I don't know about you, but over the last year I've come to appreciate (and deeply miss!) a lot of things that I used to take for granted before. One of those things was playing tabletop games with my friends - in person. I hope very much to be returning to that soon, but in order to help fill in the void left by not being able to gather in my basement, I've taken to playing D&D online. Apart from physically seeing my friends' smiling faces all in the same room, one of the things I...
I don’t know about you , but I’m a sucker for cool stuff. I’m a collector. I love to brazenly display my fandoms and hold onto keepsakes long after they’re relevant. My home office is basically completely decked out with paraphernalia from my favorite fandoms, many of which are video games. Several pieces have come from collector’s editions, which have become, much to my dismay, relics of the past. There are a few major pulls that most collector&rsqu...
No, it’s not science fiction - the video above is a demonstration of a new 3D printing method that can create something that would normally take 6 or more hours in just 19 minutes. Engineers at University of Buffalo say that this technology is progress toward 3D-printed human tissue and organs, biotechnology that could eventually save countless lives. This new technology is 10-50 times faster than the current industry standard and works with large sample sizes that have been pr...
A couple of weeks ago, I used an internet archive tool and took a look at some of the history behind a few of our now discounted software products. This time, I’m going to look at 3 more classic products that we still have up on our website for posterity, even though they are no longer supported or available. The first one we’re discussing, according to Wayback Machine, first appeared online over 20 years ago. DesktopX DesktopX was a desktop utility program desig...
I imagine that I'm probably not the only one who has inherited boxes of old photographs of dearly departed family members throughout the years. Many of the photos I have in my possession depict people I never got a chance to meet - my great grandfathers and grandmothers, for instance - and what really connects me to the photos are the loving stories that my parents and grandparents would share about them. A company that provides automatic AI-powered photo enhancements called MyHeritage has ...
The Internet is a wonderful place - most of the time. You can stay connected with friends and family who live far away, learn new information at the touch of a button, and play games with people no matter where you are! Unfortunately, with every great thing there often comes a vice - and in the case of the Internet, that means scammers. There’s always going to be someone trying some new way to take advantage of others who don’t know any better. Plenty of us have been online lon...
In case you hadn't noticed, we really love space here at Stardock. Our fascination for space and science-fiction is obviously reflected in tons of our games, from Galactic Civilizations III to Offworld Trading Company and Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. Because of our collective interest in space as a whole and in the Sci-Fi genre, we get excited about rocket launches and missions to other planets. Last March, the Mars Rover got its name ahead of its July 2020 mission launch. We w...
Since the creation of “ Tennis for Two ” (which later became Pong) by nuclear physicist William Higinbotham, gaming has come a long way. When video games first started becoming a “thing,” there wasn’t a whole lot of variety available, but as technology has advanced, it has opened the floodgates for a plethora of new adventures. I have talked a lot about different genres - things like Horror , and Open World , and Strategy - but I want...