metals

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has been announced at GDC, and it didn't hurt at all.

Speaking onstage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Metal Gear Solid director Hideo Kojima said Metal Gear Solid V is Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain combined. Snake has been in a coma for nine years, and awakens in the hospital at the start of the game alongside Ishmael, the figure from The Phantom Pain whose face is in covered in bandages.

During the gameplay demo, which is set in the game's tutorial level, Snake … Read more

Though it never achieved Contra-like success, this game series ran for more than a decade and had a dozen titles. Now, you can have all the side-scrolling fun of Metal Slug on your Android gadget. It might not run smoothly on every gadget, but newer tablet and smartphone owners should have plenty of fun.

If you've ever played any of the arcade versions of the game, you'll feel right at home. If not, Metal Slug is a fairly typical scrolling shooter. You run through screen after screen, blasting away at aliens and tanks that threaten to take over … Read more

NEW YORK--Lars Ulrich of Metallica and Sean Parker, one of the founders of file-sharing service Napster, made peace today.

In an unlikely detente, the two men joined Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, on stage during the streaming music service's press event here, more than a decade since their famous feud when Ulrich tried to get Napster shut down. More recently, it turns out that Ulrich and Parker share a love of Spotify and Ulrich announced that Metallica is now offering its catalog on the service.

Besides offering testimonials about how much they enjoy using Spotify, the two shared their … Read more

While most classical concert halls deliver the best of Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach, the Boston-based Video Game Orchestra plays tunes from the annals of beloved franchises such as Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania, and others.

The eclectic musical group -- which weaves a Mannheim Steamroller-esque synthesis of classical music and a rock -- played to a packed house yesterday at the Boston Symphony Hall and completed a major milestone on Kickstarter by generating $40,000 in donations to launch an album recorded from the performance. … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- The POTUS did an AMA on Reddit yesterday, and here are the Web site's stats.

- Metal Gear Solid movie heads into production, will be produced by Avi Arad.

- Google begins reminding users of friends' birthdays.… Read more

Even with its belt full of powerful tools onboard, Smart Tools is, for the most part, simple. The app opens up to a wall of choices, and if you've used any of Smart Tools' apps before, then all of them should look familiar. Smart Tools combines the powers of all of the developer's individual Pro tool sets.

The first set lets you measure length and angle, using a level, ruler, and two protractors (one which uses the screen, and the other your device's camera).

The second offers a Distance tool, which is a bit more complicated, as … Read more

Liquid Metal Battery, an MIT spinoff backed by Bill Gates, has secured an additional $15 million in series B financing in a funding round led by Khosla Ventures, the company announced today.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company, which aims to build a cheap battery for bulk storage of wind and solar power, also announced that Andrew Chung, a Khosla Ventures partner, would join the board.

"Our Liquid Metal Battery technology is tremendously exciting because it has the potential to dramatically change the electric power system everywhere," Liquid Metal Battery CEO Phil Giudice said in a statement announcing the … Read more

After a brief hiatus, the long-standing rumor that Apple will employ more metal in the iPhone, has made a return -- and even taken a new twist.

Citing unnamed industry sources, Korean news site ETnews says Apple will use Liquidmetal technology for the next iPhone, which the outlet boldly claims will be unveiled at Apple's annual worldwide developers conference.

That conference, which has yet to be announced, typically takes place in June. Up until the last year, it has also been ground zero for the unveiling of new iPhones, including Apple's first-generation model.

As for the question of whether Apple would even use such a material, it's been more of when, rather than if.… Read more

If you've ever dropped a small screw or a paperclip onto thick carpet, you know how difficult it can be to find them.

With an Android app called Metal Detector (by Smart Tools), you can turn your Android phone into a metal detector. Using the app might just help you find those small metal objects before you accidentally step on them or before they get sucked up into your vacuum cleaner.

Metal Detector works by measuring the magnetic field around the location of your Android phone. It begins with a baseline measurement, then when it detects a metal, the … Read more