Now Hear This

Advances in circuitry and Bluetooth have made hearing-aid alternatives cheaper and more powerful 

One night in June 2010, New York composer Richard Einhorn went to bed in a motel feeling stuffy and woke up almost completely deaf. At the time, Einhorn, who wrote the oratorio Voices of Light, had limited ways to deal with his nightmare condition, known as sudden sensorineural hearing loss. He visited an audiologist and bought a hearing aid for $3,000. (His insurance plan, like most, didn’t cover it). Unhappy with the expense and the limits of the earpiece’s technology, which struggled to adapt to different noise levels, Einhorn began searching for alternative gadgets that could restore more of his hearing for less money.



Today, he has a backpack full of them. To supplement his old-school hearing aid, he favours a $350 iPhone-linked earpiece made by Sound World Solutions, a hearing-h ardware maker in Illinois, for whom he’s begun to consult. With the Sound World device on, he can amplify phone calls and streaming music as well as his surroundings. A third, $500 earpiece was custom-made by Ultimate Ears in California, to help him detect a wider range of musical tones while composing. For restaurants and theatres, he has a $45 directional microphone that pairs with a $5 app to isolate desired voices. And for especially cacophonous places, he has spare $700 microphones, made by Etymotic Research in Illinois, that he can strap to companions.

Einhorn credits the audio patchwork with saving his career and his life. “It’s incredible”, he says over lunch in a busy restaurant, as he toggles the proper setting on his phone.

The Bluetooth-connected earpieces aren’t classified as hearing aids by the US Food and Drug Administration. They’re called personal sound amplification products, or PSAPs. Basic versions of such devices have existed for more than a decade in lonely RadioShack aisles and a handful of other places. But in the past 18 months, advances in circuitry and low-energy Bluetooth transmission have helped developers radically improve the designs to make high-quality, long-lasting alternatives to hearing aids while keeping prices at a fraction of the industry standard.

Whatever regulators or insurers call them, PSAP manufacturers are angling to expand the $6 billion global market for hearing technology. Largely due to the cost, 75 per cent of the 34 million Americans with hearing loss don’t use aids, says David Kirkwood, the editor of industry blog Hearing Health Technology Matters. “A lot of people will continue to pay for traditional hearing aids,” he says. “But there are now inexpensive, easy-to-get alternatives.”

Part of the reason PSAPs are cheap is that they’re unregulated. Hearing aid fittings and audiological calibrations account for much of the cost of aids from the big six makersâ€"Siemens, Sonova, Starkey Hearing Technologies, William Demant, GN ReSound, and Widex. A midlevel pair that retails for $4,400 costs about $440 to manufacture, according to AARP. Research and development spending is also a factor: Unlike the free Bluetooth standard used by upstarts such as Sound World, oldschool hearing aids run on proprietary signal processing and transmission technology. Siemens, Sonova, and Widex declined to comment; GN ReSound, Starkey, and William Demant didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Still, being kept out of doctors’ offices has been a huge problem for PSAP makers, says Venkat Rajan, who tracks medical devices for researcher Frost Sullivan. While the size of the market can be difficult to gauge given the lack of regulation, anecdotal evidence suggests sales have been soft, he says. It doesn’t help that, according to industry journal the Hearing Review, the average American buying a hearing aid is 71 years old. “Trying to find that customer base has been difficult,” Rajan says.

The origin of this article can be found here, why are hearing aids so expensive, it is a old technology! In 2011 10 million people had hearing loss and it's expected that 14 and a half people will be suffering. This is a market that is being exploited.

When Bob Woolmer and Hansie Cronje fell foul of the ICC in their attempt to use technology to help their communication

While technology has come to play an increasing part in the modern game, when the captain is in the middle he remains very much on his own, able only to draw on advice from his team-mates and the occasional message from the dressing room surreptitiously brought out by a water carrier or physio. But at the 1999 World Cup, South Africa tried - and failed - to find a way around the problem.

For more than a year before the tournament, Bob Woolmer (at the time South Africa's coach and always someone looking for new approaches to old problems), had been toying with an idea he had seen work in US sport where it was common practice for players to wear small earpieces to allow them to hear instructions from coaches.

Woolmer tried the equipment in a couple of benefit matches during the year; it worked well and, just as importantly, went almost unnoticed. After checking it did not breach either the tournament regulations or the laws of cricket, he suggested to Cronje they use it in the tournament itself. He agreed and when the proposal was mentioned to Allan Donald, he too said he was willing to give it a try.

South Africa tried the earpieces out in one of their warm-up matches and again it attracted no comment, so they decided to use them when South Africa played India in the two sides' opening game in Hove on May 15. Mohammad Azharuddin won the toss and batted and when Cronje led his side on to the field he and Donald had their earpieces in place.

It did not take long for the television commentators to spot them, and Sourav Ganguly, who opened for India with Sachin Tendulkar, also noticed, bringing it to the attention of the umpires, Steve Bucknor and David Shepherd, shortly before the drinks break.

The umpires spoke to Cronje, who was quite open about what was going on. Unable to decide if what he was doing was legal, they asked Talat Ali, the match referee, for a ruling. He too was unsure and contacted the ICC, which said that while the earpieces were technically not breaching any rules, they were unfair. As drinks came out, so did Ali, making clear the earpieces had to go. Although the audience on TV was privy to the discussion, most spectators at Hove were left bemused, so small were the devices that were being used.

South Africa went on to win the match and afterwards Woolmer was unrepentant. "All I was trying to do was give help and advice," he said. "I'm sorry if I've upset anyone. I've tried to be innovative; the idea was to take the game forward. Where we erred was, I should have asked the ICC for permission. Perhaps I'm naive, but it didn't occur to me. I felt it was a really good idea and I would like to discuss it with the ICC.

"I'm not trying to disturb the batsman or the captain, I'm just wanting to offer some advice. They use it in American football and I believe the French used it in their World Cup campaign, so I felt it was a really good idea. Hopefully, it will make life easier for the cricketer."

He also went out of his way to explain the system was not aimed at giving instructions. "If Donald, for example, is not bowling with rhythm I could tell him to run in harder or more softly. It is a way of addressing technical faults by looking at the game from a different angle."

Cronje was also dismissive of criticism. "There's nothing in the rules to stop us from using it and it's very disappointing it's been stopped," he said. "The coach sits at a different angle from me and he can give me different options when we're batting or bowling. It's always nice to hear another voice." He also asked if the ICC was going to ban gloves being taken out to batsmen "in case a message from the coach is sent with them".

If the media hoped Azharuddin would be incensed, they were disappointed. "It's going to happen," he said. "It does in other sports."

ICC spokesman Clive Hitchcock said: 'We made our position clear when we said that the World Cup is not the event to experiment with new devices. We would listen to anything the South Africa management had to say on the issue, but in view of the fact that we would have to get all the countries together to discuss the issue, it is unlikely these devices will be used again in the current tournament. There may be nothing in the rules banning them but neither is there anything there saying that they can be used."

When the press asked Ali Bacher, the chief executive of the United Cricket Board of South Africa, for his opinion, he admitted he was aware of Woolmer's innovation. "Bob came to me about 15 months ago to ask about it and I told him at the time that it could be controversial," he said. "But Bob has a hyperactive cricket brain and sometimes he gets ahead of himself."

The South Africans left Hove still hoping they would be allowed to use the earpieces but the ICC made clear it was not going to budge and that was that.

What happened next

• The ICC subsequently banned the use of such devices but Woolmer was undeterred. "I believe that technology is the way to go forward and we will be using earpieces in the nets at Warwickshire so that I don't have to keep interrupting players to make my point. But I am also hopeful that I can persuade the ECB to allow the use of earpieces in second team cricket to show that they can be a real help to captains and players."



• Less than a year later Cronje was uncovered as a match-fixer and subsequently banned from the game. He died in an air crash in 2002.



• Woolmer resigned as South Africa coach at the end of the tournament and returned to Warwickshire. He died in suspicious circumstances during the 2007 World Cup.​​

With the end of the Cricket world cup approaching, we still don't see any modern communications coming into the game, does it matter that the coaches are able to communicate better with their players? other sports allow the coaches to shout and lead players, why wouldn't cricket? you can find the original source of the article here

New Technology May Double Radio Frequency Data Capacity

A team of Columbia Engineering researchers has invented a technologyâ€"full-duplex radio integrated circuits (ICs)â€"that can be implemented in nanoscale CMOS to enable simultaneous transmission and reception at the same frequency in a wireless radio. Up to now, this has been thought to be impossible: transmitters and receivers either work at different times or at the same time but at different frequencies. The Columbia team, led by Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Harish Krishnaswamy, is the first to demonstrate an IC that can accomplish this. The researchers presented their work at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco on February 25.

CoSMIC (Columbia high-Speed and Mm-wave IC) Lab full-duplex transceiver IC that can be implemented in nanoscale CMOS to enable simultaneous transmission and reception at the same frequency in a wireless radio

“This is a game-changer,” says Krishnaswamy, director of the Columbia high-Speed and Mm-wave IC (CoSMIC) Lab. “By leveraging our new technology, networks can effectively double the frequency spectrum resources available for devices like smartphones and tablets.”

In the era of Big Data, the current frequency spectrum crisis is one of the biggest challenges researchers are grappling with and it is clear that today's wireless networks will not be able to support tomorrow's data deluge. Today's standards, such as 4G/LTE, already support 40 different frequency bands, and there is no space left at radio frequencies for future expansion. At the same time, the grand challenge of the next-generation 5G network is to increase the data capacity by 1,000 times.

So the ability to have a transmitter and receiver re-use the same frequency has the potential to immediately double the data capacity of today's networks. Krishnaswamy notes that other research groups and startup companies have demonstrated the theoretical feasibility of simultaneous transmission and reception at the same frequency, but no one has yet been able to build tiny nanoscale ICs with this capability.

“Our work is the first to demonstrate an IC that can receive and transmit simultaneously,” he says. “Doing this in an IC is critical if we are to have widespread impact and bring this functionality to handheld devices such as cellular handsets, mobile devices such as tablets for WiFi, and in cellular and WiFi base stations to support full duplex communications.”

The biggest challenge the team faced with full duplex was canceling the transmitter's echo. Imagine that you are trying to listen to someone whisper from far away while at the same time someone else is yelling while standing next to you. If you can cancel the echo of the person yelling, you can hear the other person whispering.

“If everyone could do this, everyone could talk and listen at the same time, and conversations would take half the amount of time and resources as they take right now,” explains Jin Zhou, Krishnaswamy’s PhD student and the paper’s lead author. “Transmitter echo or ‘self-interference’ cancellation has been a fundamental challenge, especially when performed in a tiny nanoscale IC, and we have found a way to solve that challenge.”

Krishnaswamy and Zhou plan next to test a number of full-duplex nodes to understand what the gains are at the network level. “We are working closely with Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Gil Zussman and his PhD student Jelena Marasevic, who are network theory experts here at Columbia Engineering,” Krishnaswamy adds. “It will be very exciting if we are indeed able to deliver the promised performance gains.”

This work was funded by the DARPA RF-FPGA program

Thankyou to columbia.edu for the tireless research, this really is an exciting invention, the possibilities if this can be brought to our industry are unbelievable.

Can constantly wearing headphones cause baldness?

No, wearing headphones, no matter how often you do it, will not cause hair loss.

This idea is tied in to the same popularly held falsehood that states that constantly wearing a hat can cause hair loss (and even premature baldness). This is, of course, completely untrue.

Here, from Health Central.com, is a particularly good rebuttal to this old wives' tale, it deals with a case study of a man named Mark.

“One of the myths surrounding hair loss is that wearing hats will cause or contribute to premature baldness. Fortunately, for men like Mark, this is not true. There is no scientific research that shows wearing a hat contributes to hair loss. In order for a hat to cause hair loss, it would need to be tight enough to cut off circulation to the hair follicles”.  

However, you may wonder why there is hair in your hat when you take it off (and sometimes rather a lot of it)? Well, according to Health Central,

“One of the reasons many people believe that hats cause hair loss is because of the amount of hair left inside a hat when you take it off. Whenever you see this, you might worry that your hair is quickly falling out. But we lose hair every day, as much as 80 to 100 strands daily. Usually, you will see this as you comb and brush your hair or when you shower. However, your hats may catch some of this hair and as it builds up over time, it may seem as if there is a lot of hair in your hat”

We suspect it also has to do with the psychological reactions to natural conditions like male pattern baldness (or androgenetic alopecia). For example, the person believes that there must be an outside factor causing his hair loss, because it can't be that he is simply going bald for no visible reason. Our hypothetical man tells himself that he's strong, he's virile and he's still a young man â€" he can't possibly be going bald, there must be some other reason for it. Hair loss can be quite traumatic and damaging to a person's self image and baldness is often (wrongly) associated with getting older and less attractive.



In fact, the statistics concerning alopecia are actually quite alarming.

40% of American men experience hair loss by the age of 45, while 65% encounter this problem by age 60 and by age 85, a whopping 80% of American men will have nothing left to comb over. They can't all be wearing headsets.

There are, however, some things that are proven to cause both hair loss and baldness. The following things can cause hair loss:

• Stress.



• Hormonal issues like hypo-thyroidism.



• The side effects of certain medications.



• Wearing tight hairstyles like pigtails or cornrows.



• Some chemicals found in various hair products (e.g. permanents or relaxers).



• Fungal infections.

To date, we don't think anyone has ever gone bald from wearing headphones (although we certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility that many a balding person has blamed it on them!)

If you are worried about losing your hair, a good piece of advice is to look at your grandfather. Why? Well, before we sign off, here is a final piece from Health Central.

“According to an article in ScienceDaily, the gene that is sometimes responsible for male baldness is inherited from the mother because this particular gene is found on the X chromosome. For men whose fathers became bald, this could be good news. It seems you should look to your grandfather, on your mother's side, to find out if you have a higher risk of baldness due to genetics”.

Lost Copy Of Shakespeare's First Folio Discovered

A lost copy of Shakespeare's First Folio has been discovered in Northern France.

The First Folio is the name commonly given to the 1623 collection entitled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories Tragedies. The book contains 36 plays, a great many of which had never been published prior to 1623, which makes The First Folio an extremely important document, as it represents the only original source for all subsequent printings/performances of many of Shakespeare's works, such as The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of The Shrew, Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar.

Counting this new addition, there are only 233 first edition copies of this book left in the world, and each have small textual variations that shed new light on Shakespeare's writing style, creative process and (possibly) his personal life.

The book was discovered in the public library of Saint-Omer, a small town near Calais. Prior to this, it had been held in a Jesuit college in the town. It was moved to the library following The French Revolution, which ended in 1799.

In addition to being a major literary event in its own right, the discovery of the book has sparked new debates as to The Bard's religious affiliation.

For over 150 years, some scholars have suggested that Shakespeare had links to secret Catholic sects that were outlawed (and severely punished) in the 16^th and early 17^th centuries.

Elizabethan England was officially a Protestant country and Catholics were brutally suppressed under this regime. Proponents of this theory cite examples in Shakespeare's writing (in particular King Richard The Second) and the presence of the mysterious William Shakeshafte at the home (and later in the last will and testament) of Alexander Hoghton, a known underground Catholic.

This previously unknown First Folio is thought to have made its way to France in the possession of Edward Scarisbrick, a well-known English Catholic who is believed to have studied at Saint-Omer in the 1630's. Scarisbrick was known to go by the name Nevill â€" and this book is inscribed with the same name.

The Jesuit College that originally owned the book sheltered Catholic exiles and also trained Englishmen who wished to become priests. Today, the institution still exists, although it has been relocated to Lancashire.

Other works of Shakespeare have also been discovered in the Jesuit College at Douai, Northern France.

Of course, this evidence alone merely proves that English exiles enjoyed reading Shakespeare. As Dr. Martin Wiggins, a senior fellow at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-Upon-Avon told The Independent, “He was admired and studied by English Catholics. We already knew that. Now we have more evidence. That doesn't mean that Shakespeare was himself a Catholic sympathiser,”

The book will be put on display in Saint-Omer as part of an exhibition of old English texts, something that is expected to draw tourism from interested parties.

Dr. Wiggins has also suggested that the copy, which has been annotated with stage directions by an unknown party, probably represents the earliest known school production of Shakespeare.

In Your Dreams: Bloke Dreams About Winning The Lottery, Actually Manages It ...But Then Has To Give Half Of It Away...

Back in 2012, Fatih Ozcan, a waiter working at the Kucukkoylu Turkish restaurant in York, apparently experienced a prophetic dream which involved him holding huge bundles of cash in both hands, whilst his boss, Hayati Kucokkoylu (either the restaurant is named after him or its an amazing coincidence) was standing in front of him.

Mr. Ozcan interpreted this dream as meaning that, if he played the lottery with his boss’ money, he’d win huge bundles of cash.

...Well, he was half right.

At work the next day, Mr. Ozcan pestered his boss to buy a few ‘Euromillions’ tickets, using money from the till. The boss eventually relented, suggested some numbers and gave him some cash.

...Amazingly, Ozcan later checked his ticket to find that he had won a Million quid.

When Fatih told Hayati of his fortunes, the boss decreed that all of the money was, in fact, his by right, as his money had paid for the majority of the tickets. Ozcan, for his part, was having none of it, and a major falling out occurred between the two men.

Eventually, the argument ended up going to court, where a judge (with apparently more sense than either man combined), decreed that the winnings should be shared 50/50 between the man that had supplied the ticket and the man that had paid for it.

Sounds fair, right? I mean both men still get a £500,000 payday out of it.

In summary, the waiter had the dream, stumped up a little cash and picked a few numbers. The restaurant manager donated the most cash (the princely sum of £9) and also picked a few numbers himself.

It really isn’t rocket science. 50/50 seems pretty fair to me...

Apparently that wasn’t the end of the debacle, though, as Kucukkoylu appealed the decision and took the issue to the London Civil Appeals Court, in the hopes of walking away with the full Million.

This month, after three years of legal wrangling, yet another judge told him to ‘bugger off and stop being so bloody greedy’ (albeit probably using more fancy language than that). The judge then declared that the fairest course of action was (you guessed it) to split the money 50/50, which pretty much any reasonable person would have already done anyway.

According to Kucukkoylu, he chose the numbers and paid for the ticket and thus, the money should rightly be his, however, without his employee having the dream in the first place, he never would have bought a ticket.

The really pathetic part of this story is that neither man appears to be happy with getting a £500,000 payday - and thus both saw fit to fight over it in court for three years, presumably spending loads on their legal fees.

...Seriously, where’s the logic?



Its hard to decide whether these men are simply greedy and stupid, or just stupid and greedy. Either way, it isn’t good.

As for the (presumably now fired) waiter - let’s just hope any dreams about seven fat customers devouring seven lean ones turn out to simply be a case of eating too much cheese before bed!

College Quarterbacks' Earpieces

Quarter backs plays an important role in American football. They are charged with the role of moving the team forward and ensuring that the play is perfect and that every move is coordinated towards the rival side in order to win. They act as leaders of the offensive team and are responsible for calling the play in the huddle. Do college quarter backs wear earpieces? That is always a million dollar question to every fan.



Due to their important role, defensive backs are allowed to wear earpieces in order to receive instructions from the coach as well as get the best tactics on how to make the best moves and ensure that they are able to push the rival team. Instructions come from the coaches since they are at a vantage point to clearly observe the other team and notice the flops of their team as they look forward to counter the other team and pursue them to make the best drills through the defensive backs.

Quartet backs are well familiar with their role and for this case the wearing of earpieces is very important in the game and tackles. It provides them with the idea of what to do next and avoid making similar mistakes since a quarterback acts as the team's driver. A quarterback will play well, with his confidence boosted and therefore the team performance will definitely be improved as much different calls for the play are made. It is a perfect mechanism employed to lure the other team and ensure that victory is directed to the team with a great quarter back. Do college quarterbacks wear earpieces? The answer is yes, the coach always has a hard task while selecting a quarter back since his role is great and it demands somebody with the ability to multitask, this to play, listen and lead the entire team to the decisions that he has been instructed without necessarily having to fail.

Earphones are perfectly designed and well fit in their helmet so that the quarter back can receive instructions clearly. They are well made to ensure that there is clear communication when it comes to getting the instructions as the game progresses. Much of the information relayed is the offensive play in and it serves an important fundamental role in ensuring that communication is paramount to the outcome of the game, for example, getting instructions like triple actions means that the quarterback will only pass the ball a few times in the game.

The earpiece does not run on throughout the game, it is designed to be automatically switched off at W15 seconds left on the play clock, a dedicated official in the college American Football is charged with this role to ensure that all is well. Once switched off, the radio is not turned on until the end of the game. Due to this unique advantage to the quarter back, he is allowed to have a designated W/a green dot placed on the back of the helmet. He is unique and plays such an important role in the game thus having to acquire this different stature.

Earpiece comes in handy for hands-free phone

This can be found over on this web site, please enjoy

The last time I remember being hands free was when I was in high school, riding my bicycle hands free.

No hands on the handlebars while I bicycled with my golf clubs to Green Acres â€" no kidding â€" Country Club in Donnellson, Iowa. My 10-speed was a marvel in balance. It certainly helped that Donnellson was flat and the streets well-paved, as well as completely lacking in traffic.

I could maneuver the mile to the golf course without putting my hands on the handlebars, except to make turns. It probably was dangerous, and police probably would pull me over now for hands-free bicycling.

Why I didn’t crumple up into a pile of bicycle and blood is beyond me. But I had hardly a care in the world when I was biking to the golf course or other points in between. And this was before helmets and the notion of traumatic brain injuries. I was just a kid.

Now, hands free takes on a new meaning in Illinois. It’s not about bicycling; it’s about driving.

And, as of Jan. 1, it is illegal to talk on your cellphone while driving if you are holding it up to your ear. Police can pull you over if they see you and give you a $75 ticket first time out. And if you don’t get it the first time, the second time you are pulled over, the ticket is $100. After four times, you could have your license suspended.

I don’t want a ticket. No call is worth $75. And you would have to be plain dumb to lose your license over cellphones.

I’ve had a cellphone for almost nine years; I think it came inside our wedding cake. For all my life, I had been tied to the landline, only it wasn’t called a landline. It was called a telephone, and it was attached to the wall. And if you wanted to make a call, you were attached to the wall.

I was a latecomer to cellphones. In fact, I was anti-cellphone. If I had a cellphone, it meant that I was connected to the world at all times; there was no getting away from it. Of course, if it rang, you would answer it. No matter where you were. In the living room. In the bathroom. Egad. In the car. There was no escaping the world with a cellphone. I wanted that escape.

But I’ve come to find out that I do not receive a lot of telephone calls. And I do not make a lot of telephone calls. I haven’t done a thorough analysis, but I think most of the telephone calls I receive come from my pharmacy, my friendly pharmacy. Completely computer generated.

My good wife comes in second. We’re really never that far apart to need to call.

But call I do on my way home from my Friday evening appointments, talking all the way from the parking lot to our driveway. I make the call to let her know I’m on my way home, giving her a chance to fire up the oven for the pizza.

And I’ve been doing this with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand to my ear holding the phone. It’s never been a problem. Not even close. It’s like talking to someone in the passenger seat. It’s hardly a distraction.

But it is a distraction, according to Illinois state law. And distractions cause crashes.

So, instead of holding the phone to your ear, you have to use hands-free technology, such as a Blue Tooth device, an earpiece, a headset or a speakerphone. The Blue Tooth is out of the question. People who use those devices look like they have cicadas sucking on their ears. Ugh.

An earpiece came with our cellphones, and that is what I am left to use.

I gave it the first try a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t see how it improves safety over a handheld phone. But greater minds than mine prevail in Illinois.

It took several minutes â€" before I started the car â€" to figure out how to plug the earpiece into the cellphone. Then I had to fairly jam the earpiece into my ear so it wouldn’t fall out or puncture my eardrum, then I made the call to my wife, and then I started the car. By the time I was in reverse, I was talking on the phone hands free.

The call was amazingly clear compared to the last time I tried using an earpiece years ago. I could hear my wife and she could hear me. Amazing.

But I was afraid the earpiece would fall out if I moved my head too quickly, and that’s enough to get into a crash. I am guessing the more I use the earpiece, the more comfortable I will become, and it won’t be long before it is second nature. Just like riding a bike. Hands free.

Microsoft Co-Founder Discovers Last Resting Place Of Legendary Japanese Warship

More than 70 years after American forces sank it, the legendary Japanese battleship Musashi has been discovered resting on the seafloor at a depth of 3,280 feet (1KM) below the water’s surface.

The expedition, headed up by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, discovered the wreck of the Musashi off the coast of The Philippines.

Allen’s private yacht, the 414-foot-long (125 meters) M/Y Octopus located the wreck in the Sibuyan Sea earlier this month, but the team has declined to offer details regarding the ship’s exact location.



Mr. Allen is known to have been fascinated by the riddle of the lost battleship and has been searching for its final resting place for 8 years.

The Mushashi met its end during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, and it is thought that over a thousand men, almost half of the ships 2,399-strong crew compliment was killed during the sinking.

The Musashi is a well-known battleship of the era because it was considered to be one of the largest â€"and most technologically advanced- warships ever built at the time. The Musashi was 862 feet long and weighed in the region of 66,225 metric tonnes. However, despite her immense size and reliable eyewitness accounts of her sinking, the precise location of the wreck remained unknown for over 7 decades.

The Musashi’s sister ship, The Yamato, met its end in 1945. The wreck was lost until the 1980’s, when shipwreck hunters discovered her remains 180 miles southwest of Kyushu. The ship was split in two and was found at a depth of 1,120 feet (340 m).

Some underwater footage of the Musashi has been released to the public already. The footage reveals the catapult system once used to launch planes, a 15-ton anchor and the turret from a naval gun.

The ship took her name from the famous Japanese samurai, philosopher and artist Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi was known for his psychological approach to duelling, as well as his unorthodox fighting style. His ‘Book of Five Rings’ (Go Rin No Sho) is considered a classic text on the subject of conflicts and personal discipline.

Musashi made his first kill at just 13 and won his most famous bout by killing the renowned samurai Sasaki Kojiro on the island of Funajima (using a modified oar that he had taken from the boat that carried him to the island). He is the founder of the Niten Ichi-ryu (‘the school of the strategy of two heavens as one’ â€" loose translation) School of swordsmanship. Musashi partook in around sixty duels, many of then to the death. He retired undefeated and died in 1645, probably from cancer.

Returning to the present, a statement on Paul Allen’s website says that, by discovering the legendary battleship, his team hopes to “bring closure to the families of those lost”.

Mr. Allen has further pledged that he and his team plan to work closely with the Japanese government in order to ensure that the wreck of The Musashi is treated "respectfully and in accordance with Japanese traditions."

Sony To Launch VR Headset In 2016

Well, the headline above pretty much says it all. Electronics company Sony have announced that they will be ready to launch their hotly anticipated PS4 virtual reality headset as early as next year.

...And I don’t mean late next year, either. Although no official release dates have been given, Sony have assured consumers that the new VR headset will be available for purchase during the “first half” of 2016. This is exciting news for any gamer (as well as for those of us that make a living writing about such advancements!)

Project Morpheus as the headset has been nicknamed by its developers, was officially announced at the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, USA. One year earlier, the annual event saw the unveiling of an early prototype headset.

This latest prototype, however, features a larger screen and exterior LED lights that aid in the tracking of movement. The new screen has a 100 Degree field of view and can render imagery at a speed of 120 frames per second.

Improvements include the redistribution of weight toward the back of the user’s head, as well as a section of the headset that accommodates the user’s eyeglasses.

Anyway. Now that the real deal is nearly ready to “rock and/or roll” (as Springfield’s Reverend Lovejoy would have it), gamers can eagerly look forward to the addition of a new dimension to their favourite pastime.

Yahoo! News reported that, Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide, announced the news, along with the following, "Our goal with VR is to deliver a sense of presence, making the player feel as though they've stepped inside the world of a game (...) The new Project Morpheus prototype brings us closer to that goal, as it improves the visual experience and tracking accuracy, both of which are critical to achieving sense of presence."

As my old Nan used to say, “it’s all clever stuff”. However, Sony aren’t the only computer company dabbling in virtual reality entertainment. HTC and Valve are expected to release their Vive system later this year, while Oculus VR are also heavily involved in the development of a similar device, the Oculus Rift headset.



As with all new technologies, there will probably be a few ‘ghosts in the machine’ to start of with, however, VR gaming is certainly going to represent a fascinating step forward in the field of computer-based entertainment.