big

"There's that pesky speed of light." That cautionary remark was offered by Lee Ziliak of Verizon Data Services, speaking on a panel at the 451 Group's Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit last week. The context was that hybrid cloud environments may logically appear as something homogeneous, but application architectures need to take the underlying physical reality into account.

Latency, the time it takes to move data from one location to another, often gets overlooked in performance discussions. There's long been a general bias toward emphasizing the amount of data rather than the time it takes … Read more

Goodyear decided to kick off this year's IAA Commercial Vehicle show in a gigantic way with the reveal of a life-size Lego big rig. While you cannot drive this mock truck, at least we can marvel at the fact that it weighs 1,631 pounds and contains a quarter of a million Lego bricks. … Read more

Let the human-hunting games begin. Boston Dynamics has a new video of its oversized beast pursuing defenseless human meatsacks through a forest.

The Legged Squad Support System (LS3), aka AlphaDog, is designed to carry 400 pounds of payload and travel 20 miles without refueling. It's funded by DARPA and the U.S. Marine Corps and is meant to support troops in rugged terrain.

The latest video shows the cow-size monster clambering over rocks and up steep hillsides with heavy weights on its sides. It charges through bushes without a thought. … Read more

Generally, the term "hard-core" and external hard drives don't go together. This is because external, portable hard drives are probably the most popular and casual type of consumer storage.

But some of them can get really serious, too.

These are external storage devices that are not just fast or rugged, but also are likely to make you think before purchasing due to their cost. In other words, they are not for everyone, but only those who have the need for them and can appreciate their value.

If you are one of these people, the following five drives are totally worth the investment.… Read more

Tuesday's top tech headlines are formatted to fit your second screen:

At the Gamescom conference in Germany, Sony announced several new PlayStation games and new methods for playing. Sony talked more about PlayStation Mobile for Android devices, but we still don't know exactly when it'll hit the market or how many games will launch in the store.

And there are some perks for those that own both a PS Vita and the PS3. For one price, you can get a game for both systems, starting with "PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale," "Sly Cooper: Thieves in … Read more

AirParrot lets you mirror your desktop, specific apps, and even lets you extend your screen on to a big screen via Apple TV, but it isn't perfect.

Particularly compelling just after the release of Mountain Lion, AirParrot lets Mac users with machines running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or later mirror their desktops (Mountain Lion's AirPlay Mirroring only works on Macs made after 2011). The app creates a Menubar item where you'll be able to mirror your desktop on a big screen via a second- or third-generation Apple TV. Once you're on the same … Read more

The truest of believers spend months cutting, sewing, and taping together the perfect custom costume for Comic-Con in San Diego, and the opportunity to flex our geek cred is too tempting to resist, so The 404 hits the floor on the first day to talk with a handful of our favorite cosplayers.

Along the way, we'll poke around shops with costumes for sale and ask for recommendations on which duo would suit us best: Jay and Silent Bob? Wayne and Garth? Thor and Loki? OK, I just want to wear a blonde wig. Join us for a tour of … Read more

"Big Data" promises to turn terabytes, petabytes, and exabytes (with, presumably, zettabytes and yottabytes to come) of what's often ambient digital detritus into useful results. That promise often seems to come with an implicit assumption; with enough data and the tools to crunch it, useful insights will follow. Insights that can be used to make businesses more efficient, tailor everything from medicine to advertising for individuals, and employ instrumentation and automation on larger and more complex physical systems than ever before.

For example, we're in the early days of what sometimes goes by the name of … Read more

Live concerts are louder than ever, but home audio systems that sound great turned up loud are increasingly rare. If you're into loud music and lucky enough to live in a place where maximum volume won't get you evicted or arrested, or earn the wrath of neighbors, treat yourself to a set of big speakers.

Sure, small satellite speakers with a powerful subwoofer can sound great, but not in the same league as large speakers. Big systems really do have huge performance advantages over even the best small ones. If you've got the space to accommodate a pair of Klipsch Reference RF-7 II speakers, they deserve an audition. The only downside to listening to the RF-7 IIs is you'll never be satisfied with a Bluetooth speaker ever again.… Read more