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Sony Launches Spotify-Powered PlayStation Music

Posted: 30 Mar 2015 01:38 PM PDT

The Sony-Spotify partnership announced earlier this year wasn’t made in vain, as their brainchild, known as PlayStation Music, finally got launched today.

The Japanese corporation already had an audio streaming service, called Music Unlimited, but that one wasn’t exactly available in as many countries or on as many devices as Sony would’ve wanted. In consequence, the company had to collaborate with others to target a greater audience with its products. The partner came in the form of Swedish startup Spotify, and the resulting product was named PlayStation Music.

Judging by the name, you might think that PlayStation Music is available exclusively on Sony’s gaming console, but you would be wrong. Not only is it available on the PS4, but also on the previous generation, and on top of that, users can also take advantage of this music streaming service on Xperia smartphones and tablets. Sony wouldn’t advertise the fact that the service is actually available on Android devices regardless of the brand, but my guess is that you could use PlayStation Music on any smartphone or tablet running Google’s mobile OS, as long as you’re in a country where Spotify works.

Getting started is pretty intuitive, but Sony insisted to post a guide on the PlayStation Network website. There are two sets of instructions, actually, and you need to follow the one belonging to the type of device you own.

Gaming console users will have to download the Spotify app and login or create a new Spotify account. Next, they need to link their PlayStation Network account to Spotify and enjoy all the music they can stream. The instructions for Xperia devices are much simpler, but very similar.

An ad-supported version of the app is available for free, but the ones who want an uninterrupted experience will have to pay $10 for a subscription. The bad news is that Xbox One users will have to wait a bit to get a similar streaming service for their consoles. Even worse, there are some chances that Sony may benefit from exclusivity in its relationship with Spotify, and seeing how the forum thread requesting an equivalent for the Xbox one has gone past 40 pages, one might conclude that there’s no room for Microsoft in this monogamous relationship.

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Researchers Invent Self-Powered Liquid Metal Machine

Posted: 30 Mar 2015 12:23 PM PDT

The T-1000 from Terminator 2 is one step closer to becoming something real, even though the liquid metal machine developed by Chinese researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China is nowhere as fast or dangerous.

Their project wasn’t born from the wish to put an end to humanity, and may indeed have some practical applications besides creating lean, mean, metal killing machines. The most fascinating aspect of this experiment is that the machine does not require any programming and as long as there is “fuel” around, it can move forward by eating.

“The soft machine looks rather intelligent and [can] deform itself according to the space it voyages in, just like [the] Terminator does from the science-fiction film,” explained Jing Liu from the Tsinghua University during an interview with Technology.org. “These unusual behaviours perfectly resemble the living organisms in nature.”

The liquid metal machine is actually made from galinstan, an alloy of gallium, indium and tin in these proportions: 68.5%, 21.5% and 10%. Since this mix has a melting point of -19 degrees Celsius, at room temperature it can always be found in a liquid state. The aforementioned fuel is represented by aluminum flakes, which the galinstan robot eats in order to propel itself.

It should be noted that the liquid motor can move by itself for up to an hour, as long as it’s placed in a Petri dish with sodium hydroxide or brine, and it’s fed an aluminum flake. If it’s locked into place, the galinstan machine can act as a pump. In this scenario, it can shift 50 milliliters of water per second. It might not sound like a lot, but a greater liquid machine would move greater quantities of water.

The liquid motor has been described by its inventors as having “large surface tension, desirable flexibility, high electrical conductivity and low toxicity,” and with so many advantages, we shouldn’t be surprised if it finds its way to industrial applications.

More details about this project are available in the journal Advanced Materials, where the Chinese researchers have published a paper titled Self-Fuelled Biomimetic Liquid Metal Mollusc. Adding intelligence to these robots is the next logical step, but that might indeed be a challenge, as coordinating a swarm of liquid metal drops to move together is not exactly child’s play.

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