tech

News & Features February 26, 2019

What is Shadow PC?

Shadow is a company that is attempting to revolutionize the way you game. They have been working on a software that allows you to play almost any game on all high settings from almost any device, including your phone. The software achieves this by connecting you to a top-of-the-line gaming PC (personal computer) at one of Shadow’s facilities. Although other gaming companies such as Nvidia have tried to do this, there has previously been too much input latency (a delay or lag) in gameplay to actually play anything, especially something competitive. But with Shadow, the input lag is way lower than any other cloud-based gaming system. When using Shadow PC, the only thing your machine actually has to run is the software itself, which isn’t demanding of expensive hardware. With this in mind you can run the software on most devices including your phone by downloading an app. Since you…

News & Features, Opinions, Television February 6, 2019

Opinion: 8K TV’s High-Def Scam

When I first heard about 8k TV I was like, cool! Yay! Then I thought, how can the tech industry keep increasing the amount the amount of pixels if the human eye has a set limit? They can’t. 8K–what does it mean? The k in 8k is 1000. That is the amount of pixels on the width of the TV. Increasing that means either increasing the size of your tv or decreasing the size of each pixel. The human eye can’t see that much without moving closer and closer so, 8k TV is a huge scam. It is not worth your money to buy something that has almost no difference unless your screen is enormous or your nose is pressed against it. 4k TV is the max, so spending money on this is just silly. 8k TV actually has no content yet and is still unavailable to the large part…

News & Features February 5, 2019

Announcing 5G Internet

5G, or fifth generation wireless, is the new generation of internet that will supposedly run at very fast speeds. 5G is only available in a few cities, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Sacramento and even in those cities access is limited and not even at top projected speeds. To understand why 5G is projected to be faster than 4G it is helpful to understand the way the signals are transmitted. According to highspeedinternet.com, 4G runs on cell towers placed in specific locations to reach a broad area. 5G focuses more on power than range. 5G is like having a lot of home wifi routers all throughout a city; they don’t have as broad a range, but they are more powerful. Since these “routers” are easier to install than giant cell towers, they are considered an exciting new advancement in wifi technology. There are downsides to 5G, too. Highspeedinternet.com says that…

News & Features October 24, 2018

Chromebooks vs. iPads

Today I’m going to be talking about Chromebooks and iPads, Which one is better? Well I asked 35 people at FCS and here are the results. Chromebooks: 9 iPads: 26 So as you can see most people prefer iPads. According to the people who answered the question, here are the pros and cons of each device. iPads: Pros: notability, faster, better camera, easier to use (meant for kids), more variety of apps Cons: keyboards, break easier, no chrome extensions, less storage, no USB ports, Chromebooks: Pros: Battery life, Keyboard, Chrome extensions, More storage, Comes with stylus, Cons: Slower than iPads, Not as easy to use camera, Unreliable, Worse photo storage Victoria Schwoebel (Pro Chromebook) Middle And Upper School Tech: It was an administrative decision, we felt that the Chromebooks suited all the needs of the Middle School. When this came out, it seemed suited for…

News & Features October 17, 2018

The BFR: SpaceX’s Plan to Get to Mars

BFR = Big Falcon Rocket Its 2018 and almost 2019, and SpaceX has been preparing for this for years. 10, 9, 8, … Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell and all the other smart, gritty and brave people in mission control are all biting their lips, 7, 6, 5, … they are testing the reusable rocket boosters and landing gear. 4, 3, 2, 1, liftoff! After six successful rocket booster landings, Elon Musk started to think about how they were really going to get to Mars. Even with 28,730,000 pounds of thrust to get the rocket to parking orbit, the trip to Mars is 54.6 million kilometers away and will take about 300 day to get there. How will we have enough fuel to get to Mars after we burned a big part of it getting to parking orbit? This is how: the rocket booster that separates after the front…

News & Features October 16, 2018

Elon Musk Resigns

Elon Musk, Tesla´s famed founder, CEO, and previous chairman resigned as chairman after a series of incidents that made bad press. A common question is what is the difference between a CEO (chief executive officer) and a chairman? Before you read forward you should understand the difference between a CEO and a chairman. In a review, a CEO is the face of the company and ensures the company’s efficiency and stability. A chairman is more concerned with pleasing the stockholders, and focuses more on counseling. The resignation was triggered by many issues adding up and in the end a lawsuit about fraud. Weeks ago Musk started talking about making Tesla private; he raised the stock prices in hopes people would sell their shares and he could but them back. Two weeks ago, Elon Musk was legally smoking marijuana. Although it was legal, the backlash was still major. Share prices dropped…

News & Features May 30, 2018

The Hyperloop: The Future of Transportation?

In 2013 the inventor and innovator Elon Musk proposed a plan for a fifth primary mode of transportation, after cars, planes, trains, and ships, which he called the Hyperloop. The concept is to create a vacuum tube down which a manned pod is propelled at hypersonic speed. It was to go in a loop between two destinations at speeds that would allow it to become the fastest method of travel available. Elon Musk called it “a cross between a Concord and a railgun and an air hockey table” and yet despite the insanity of the proposition he, working with SpaceX engineers, released a early systems design in 2013. At this point, it seemed guaranteed that Musk had a new venture in mind. However, instead of founding another company, he publicly released the Hyperloop Alpha design with the goal to “see if the people can find ways to improve it”. By…