You can get an unlocked Galaxy S7 Edge for $589 on eBay right now

Over $200 off the sleek Samsung flagship.

(credit: Samsung)

If you've been lusting after Samsung's Galaxy S7 Edge but leery about paying $800 for it, now's your chance to get it for less. One eBay vendor is selling black, gold, and silver models of the S7 Edge for $589, the lowest price we've seen on the new flagship.The sale was first spotted by Android Police.

Each 32GB device is unlocked so you can use it on any GSM carrier. It's also a dual-SIM handset, meaning you can have two SIM cards in the phone at once, or a SIM card and a microSD card. It's also worth noting that these models are not used or refurbished—they appear to be brand-new S7 Edge handsets, making the price even more tempting.

The eBay seller is based in Florida and ships to most areas of the United States, except for Alaska and Hawaii. International shipping is also available.

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Anrufweiterschaltung: Bundesnetzagentur schaltet falsche Ortsnetznummern ab

Die Bundesnetzagentur hat einer Firma 300 Rufnummern entzogen, mit der Ortsanschlüsse vorgetäuscht wurden. Dabei wurde eine Anrufweiterschaltung versteckt. (Bundesnetzagentur, Rechtsstreitigkeiten)

Die Bundesnetzagentur hat einer Firma 300 Rufnummern entzogen, mit der Ortsanschlüsse vorgetäuscht wurden. Dabei wurde eine Anrufweiterschaltung versteckt. (Bundesnetzagentur, Rechtsstreitigkeiten)

IMAX will build you a home theater—starting at $400,000

Includes dual 4K 2D/3D projectors, a proprietary IMAX sound, and media playback.

If you have about £300,000 ($400K) to spare, IMAX's Private Theatre division will now build an IMAX cinema setup in your own home.

The entry-level IMAX Private Theatre is the "Palais," which starts at about £300K for a screening room with up to 18 seats. For your money you get dual 4K 2D/3D projectors, a proprietary IMAX sound system, and a media playback system that supports everything you might want to throw at it (TV, games, Blu-ray, etc.) No word on the exact specifications of the projectors, but they're probably not IMAX-with-laser. Screen size will vary depending on the setup, but generally they will be 3 metres (10ft) tall or more.

Stepping up to the "Platinum" IMAX home theatre for about £750,000 ($1 million) gets you a much larger screening room with space for up to 40 people. The IMAX website doesn't break out the specs of the Platinum setup, but presumably it's similar to the Palais. Both the Palais and Platinum models come with automatic daily self-calibration to ensure optimal picture and audio setup, 24/7 remote monitoring (whatever that means in the context of home theatres), and, of course, the design and architecture of the room itself is so exquisite that your friends will think you have great taste (if that was ever in doubt).

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Making energy out of waste heat with simple ingredients

Differences as small as 20°C can be turned into useful power.

The world is awash in our waste heat. Our computers, our motors, our electrical generating plants—all of them shed heat into the environment. That's in part because there's no easy way to capture its energy and put it to use. All the existing methods we have for harvesting waste heat are either inefficient or uneconomical.

Now, some researchers have come up with a new method of grabbing some of that waste heat and potentially putting it to work. Their system relies on nothing more complex than water and a polymer membrane and, even in its first test form, it's already capturing roughly half of the possible Carnot efficiency available to the system.

We already generate lots of electricity via heat differences. It's just that those differences are large—large enough to create the pressure differences needed to drive turbines. Waste heat often becomes waste simply because the temperature differences are small, on the order of dozens of degrees Celsius, rather than hundreds.

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Radeon RX 480 im Test: Eine bessere Grafikkarte gibt es für den Preis nicht

Viel Leistung dank Polaris-Technik und acht GByte Speicher für 250 Euro: AMD hat mit der Radeon RX 480 prinzipiell eine sehr gute Grafikkarte für Spieler im Angebot. Einzig bei der Effizienz hätten wir verglichen mit der Konkurrenz deutlich mehr erwartet. (Radeon R9, AMD)

Viel Leistung dank Polaris-Technik und acht GByte Speicher für 250 Euro: AMD hat mit der Radeon RX 480 prinzipiell eine sehr gute Grafikkarte für Spieler im Angebot. Einzig bei der Effizienz hätten wir verglichen mit der Konkurrenz deutlich mehr erwartet. (Radeon R9, AMD)

Discovery of new helium reserves a “game changer” for medical industry

Tanzania could now hold the solution to the world’s chronic helium shortage.

It might be the second most common element in the observable universe but until very recently, Earth, it was thought, was running out of helium. Aside from its obvious uses in balloons given out at children's parties by pizza restaurants, the noble gas actually has a number of vital medical and scientific applications—and in recent decades we've burned through most of our once-enormous reserves.

Helium is used mostly as a coolant, especially in MRI scanners, which use around one fifth of the world's reserves in liquid form to cool the machines' superconducting magnets. The semiconductor industry also uses it to grow crystals, while modern materials science also uses its high-yield cooling properties, as do certain advanced telescopes. Despite its uses, however, Earth was believed to be coming to an end of its reserves, having been allowed to squander what was once considered a fairly useless resource.

Researchers from Durham and Oxford universities, however, have surprised the scientific world by discovering a huge new reserve in Tanzania's Rift Valley in east Africa—using a new technique which could be used to find even more. It turns out that volcanic activity helps release the gas from the ancient rocks which usually hold it, allowing it to rise to shallower gas fields.

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Windows 10 Anniversary Update launches August 2nd

Windows 10 Anniversary Update launches August 2nd

Microsoft has released dozens of updates to Windows 10 since launching the operating system a year ago. But the biggest update yet is coming August 2nd.

It’s called Windows 10 Anniversary Update… and it’s not exactly a big surprise. Microsoft already told us about some of the key new features in March, and members of the Windows Insider Preview program have been testing early version for a while.

But now we know that the Anniversary Update will be available as a free update to all Windows 10 users starting August 2nd.

Continue reading Windows 10 Anniversary Update launches August 2nd at Liliputing.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update launches August 2nd

Microsoft has released dozens of updates to Windows 10 since launching the operating system a year ago. But the biggest update yet is coming August 2nd.

It’s called Windows 10 Anniversary Update… and it’s not exactly a big surprise. Microsoft already told us about some of the key new features in March, and members of the Windows Insider Preview program have been testing early version for a while.

But now we know that the Anniversary Update will be available as a free update to all Windows 10 users starting August 2nd.

Continue reading Windows 10 Anniversary Update launches August 2nd at Liliputing.

Overwatch: Ranglistenspiele mit kleinen Hindernissen

Blizzard hat die Ranglistenspiele für die PC-Version von Overwatch veröffentlicht. Vor dem ersten Match sind aber ein paar Hürden zu überwinden: Spieler müssen mindestens Level 25 erreicht haben und zehn Platzierungspartien absolvieren. (Overwatch, Playstation 4)

Blizzard hat die Ranglistenspiele für die PC-Version von Overwatch veröffentlicht. Vor dem ersten Match sind aber ein paar Hürden zu überwinden: Spieler müssen mindestens Level 25 erreicht haben und zehn Platzierungspartien absolvieren. (Overwatch, Playstation 4)

Electric Vehicles at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: Race report

But a Tesla Model S set a new Electric Production car record.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb turned 100 this year, making it five years younger than the Indianapolis 500. Other than age, the two events have very little in common. The first Indy 500 came about because Carl Fisher wanted to give America's new car builders somewhere to test their creations; by contrast, Spencer Penrose organized the first Pikes Peak Hill Climb in 1916 to help draw tourists to the mountain (and in turn, his hotel the Broadmoor). Ironic then that all these years later it's Pikes Peak—rather than Indianapolis—that's being used to test the cutting edge of automotive technology.

In particular, people have been bringing electric cars and motorbikes (you can read about those later today) to test them on the hill climb. The 12.4-mile (19.99km) course is short enough that they don't need to be overburdened with batteries, for one. And unlike internal combustion engines, electric motors don't care whether they're at sea level, the start line (9.390 feet/2,862m), or the 14,110-foot (4,300m) summit—they make the same amount of power everywhere.

When last we checked in from America's Mountain, Romain Dumas and his Norma M20 RD Limited Spec-2016 were the fastest combination of man and machine, topping the qualifying charts. This somewhat upset the narrative—for the Norma runs in the Unlimited class and does so on gasoline, not electrons. As the fastest overall qualifier, Dumas would be the first of the cars to set off, some two hours later than planned. Below the tree line the weather was perfect, but icy conditions up top saw several motorbikes crash, causing several lengthy delays.

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Man vs. Snake: A thrilling documentary about a boring game

The marathon quest for a Nibbler high score is a worthy successor to King of Kong.

A 100% accurate artist's conception of the Nibbler high score battle.

The excellent The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters exposed the wider world to the strange subculture of classic video game high score competitions in 2007. Now that the ensuing quest for ever higher and higher Donkey Kong scores looks like it's coming to an end, it's the perfect time for a new documentary focused on an even stranger sub-niche: players who spend days "marathoning" classic arcade games for high scores. In other words, it's the perfect time for Man vs. Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler.

Man vs. Snake (currently available for download and in an extremely limited theatrical run) includes a number of amusingly candid quotes along the lines of "What the fuck is Nibbler?" You'd be forgiven if you were thinking the same thing; the 1982 release's mix of Pac-Man and Snake gameplay failed to impact the arcade marketplace at the time, and it wasn't a massive seller for jukebox manufacturer Rock-Ola, either. But the game did catch the eye of Tim McVey, who became the first person ever confirmed to score 1 billion points on any video game in early 1984, winning himself a Nibbler arcade cabinet in the process.

McVey's feat was only possible because Nibbler is part of a certain subset of classic arcade games that are amenable to marathoning. Because the game continues to give extra lives at regular intervals (and because the game's speed and endlessly repeating mazes stop getting harder at an early point), the only thing limiting a skilled player's score is their ability to stay awake and focused at the machine for hours at a time. While a Donkey Kong high score run only takes three or fours hours to complete, getting a top score on Nibbler can easily take 40 hours or more of mind-numbing repetition (save for occasional breaks where the player trades a few extra lives for a few moments of rest).

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