Tech2

I played the first Dead Space because I had to. It was one of my first game reviews for ­S+V. It was inconsistent, regularly annoying, but fairly enjoyable. The sequel was a better game overall, but lacking some of the first game's raw scariness.

The universe, story, and concept were sound enough that I was actually looking forward to DS3.

Here's what I found.

It's hard to write up news about the PS4 when there wasn't any actual news about the PS4. At what best can be described as a "Save-the-Date" event, Sony laid out their ideas for their next-gen console, but gave few, if any, specifics.

What we found out is... interesting. By far the PS4 is being pushed as a gaming console to act as a central hub for a gaming lifestyle, than a hardcore, cutting-edge, gaming machine.

That and other disappointments AWESOME GAMING NEWS after the jump.

I'm not sure what to make of the Viewsonic VSD220. I like it. It works as you'd hope, looks quite nice, and is priced well.

But it is definitely a niche product. If you can spot a place in your life for this niche, then I think it's definitely worth checking out.

What is it? Well, you can think of it as a 22-inch Android tablet, with HDMI and USB inputs. Or, you can think of it as a small Smart TV with Android OS.

Got ideas yet? I do.

When testing headphones with multiple listeners-our standard practice at S+V-I've learned that perceptions of a headphone's tonal balance can differ among listeners. Of course, individual taste in sound varies, too.

One solution to this problem is a headphone that can be tuned to the user's taste, a feature we've encountered on in-ear monitors from AKG and Phonak. Both have interchangeable filters that can alter the headphone's tonal balance. But the former costs $1,299, and the latter uses extremely tiny filters that require a special tool to change.

A new company named Torque Audio has what looks like a more practical approach.

It's only natural, in the wake of any random act of extreme violence, to look for an explanation: What caused this to happen? What can we do to prevent it from happening again?

While it's fair to ask these questions, the frustrating truth is that most of the time, we'll never know.

Not knowing, sadly, is not an acceptable answer. Instead, "the other" is blamed. When it comes to politicians and lobbyists, this "other" is anything the younger generations are into, that they themselves aren't. Thirty years ago it was rap and heavy metal. Thirty before that, it was rock and roll.

Today, the common scapegoat is video games, and blaming them is just as specious.

When we think about how electronics products are developed, we might imagine huge teams of faceless engineers, executives embroiled in endless discussions in elaborate conference rooms, and an almost Kafkaesque process that no one person really understands or controls.

"The book is not a direct influence. That is to say that it did not spur me on to write any sort of song cycle or (gasp!) concept album. Rather, I found myself writing a lot of songs with a sense of a specific space, my hometown of Huntington, Long Island, New York."

So explains Bill Janovitz and about his new album, Walt Whitman Mall, and it seems as apt a description as I can think of.

Oh, and it's also really good. He didn't say that part (obviously).