?Entrepreneurs Shouldn?t Respect Authority? says Founder of Sun Microsystems

The Innovation Center for Denmark and Start X Labs put on a brilliant event with co-founder of tech giant Sun Microsystems Vinod Khosla. I was lucky to grab Vinod for a quick interview where he summarized his talk about how to teach entrepreneurs irreverence. ?It?s important not to learn not to respect authority too much,? said Vinod, who also told the audience that he throws food at his kids across the dinner table sometimes to teach them irreverence and to break conventional molds. Vinod says the same should be taught for entrepreneurship in order to succeed.

You can also watch our interview with the Danish minister for Science Charlotte Sahl Madsen on why she bought Danish lectures to learn from Silicon Valley professors like Steve Blank.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/video/2011/07/09/entrepreneurs-shouldnt-respect-authority-says-founder-of-sun-microsystems/

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First Fully Synthetic Organ Transplant Saves Cancer Patient

Surgeons in Sweden have successfully transplanted a fully synthetic, tissue-engineered organ?a trachea?into a man with late-stage tracheal cancer. The synthetic trachea was created entirely in the lab, using a scaffold built out of a porous polymer, and tissue grown from the patient's own stem cells inside a bioreactor designed to protect the organ and promote cell growth.

The surgery was performed last month by Paolo Macchiarini at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Stockholm. The patient has now made a full recovery, and will be discharged from the hospital today.

The scaffolding for the trachea was built by a team led by Alexander Seifalian, professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London. Tissue was grown on top of the scaffold from the patient's own stem cells using the "InBreath" bioreactor from Harvard Bioscience. The scaffold was seeded with a solution of stem cells taken from the patient's bone marrow, and kept warm and sterile as the scaffold rotated inside the bioreactor while the cells grew into tissues. The entire process took about two weeks.

The transplant is a significant moment for regenerative medicine, says Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at University of California, San Francisco. "Finding ways for stem cells to be used to engineer replacement parts," is exactly what regenerative medicine promises, Kriegstein says.

However, Kriegstein notes that a trachea is "relatively low-hanging fruit" because it is primarily a mechanical organ?a conduit for air. Building something as complex as a lung or a kidney would be far more challenging, he says.

Artificial organs would be superior to ordinary donor organs in several ways. They can be made to order more quickly than a donor organ can often be found; being grown from a patient's own cells, they also do not require dangerous immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection.

Replacement organs have been grown, and implanted, in the past, using a patient's cells and a donor organ stripped of its tissue, with the remaining cartilage to serve as a scaffold for tissue growth. In 2006, a team at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Pittsburgh successfully implanted lab-grown bladders in children with spina bifida. Synthetic scaffolding had been created previously, but it had not been used to replace a human organ.

To construct the trachea, Seifalian and his team used a polymer pitted with millions of tiny little holes to provide places for the patient's stem cells to take root.

First, Seifalian and his team created a glass mold of the patient's trachea from CT scans of the patient. Then, they cut strips of a polymer and wrapped them around the model to create the cartilage "rings" that give structural strength to the trachea. And they dipped the model into a liquid version of the same polymer, which had been mixed with salt. Finally, they washed the whole thing in a solution that dissolved the salts and caused the liquid polymer to congeal into a spongy form that resembles an organic trachea.

Once the trachea scaffold was built, living tissue was grown on top of it using Harvard Bioscience's "InBreath" bioreactor?a shoebox-sized device in which the trachea was mounted "much in the way you'd mount a chicken on the rotisserie," says David Green, president of Harvard Bioscience. A solution of stem cells from the patient's bone marrow was poured onto the synthetic trachea, and the scaffolding was rotated while kept sterile and warm. The solution included chemicals meant to coax the cells to differentiate into the types of cells found in a trachea. It took about two days for tissues to form.

Building the scaffolding was slowed by this being a first-time effort, explains Seifalian. In future, he says, they could build a complete scaffold from CT scans in two days.

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HDMI Org says Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI cables are illegal

If you've been meaning to pick up a Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable, you may want to act quick and get 'em while they're hot. According to HDMI Org, the committee that oversees the HDMI specification, such wires are illegal and could disappear from stores. Speaking with TechRadar, the group claims that any cable with a male Mini DisplayPort connector on one side and a male HDMI connector on the opposite side is unlicensed and shouldn't be on your local Best Buy's shelves.

Backing its claims, the organization underscored a few lines from the HDMI specification. One line specifies an HDMI cable as having only HDMI connectors -- anything else is unpermitted. If that's not convincing enough, the group also said that all HDMI products undergo compliance testing as defined by the Compliance Testing Specification. Since mDP-to-HDMI cables aren't mentioned in the HDMI specification, there are no tests associated with the product, so they can't be approved.

Interestingly, cables with a male mDP connector alongside a female HDMI receptacle are fine because a licensed HDMI cable can be attached. Apple is currently one of the largest proponents of mDP and happens to sell one of the unapproved cables online. It's unclear how HDMI Org will address the situation, but it does acknowledge that there is a market for an mDP-to-HDMI cable instead of a dongle -- they just want to do it by the book. It's worth noting that MonoPrice has already discontinued its mDP-to-HDMI offerings.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44620-hdmi-org-says-mini-displayport-to-hdmi-cables-are-illegal.html

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Industry Set for Fight to Keep Corporate Jet Tax Breaks

But Mr. Obama said he soon grew uncomfortable with the high-flying perk in his Senate days and started flying commercial. Now, as the president squares off with Republicans over the debt ceiling, he and fellow Democrats are looking to turn tax breaks for corporate jet owners ? and yacht owners, too ? into a potent political symbol of a tax system that Democrats say tilts toward the very rich.

Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders have made a rollback of tax breaks for corporate jets a frequent talking point in recent days in their efforts to persuade Republicans to agree to raise taxes as well as make spending cuts as part of the budget talks. But the drumbeat from Democrats has set off a counterattack from a small but powerful group of jet manufacturers and users, who have contributed millions of dollars over the years to lawmakers from both parties.

The debate is less about dollars and cents than it is about political imagery and a bit of class warfare. Ending special deductions for the depreciation of corporate jets would raise an estimated $3 billion in tax revenues ? or, as the jet manufacturers point out, a fraction of one percent of the deficit the country is facing.

?The president is vilifying an entire industry,? said Dan Hubbard, a senior vice president for the National Business Aviation Association, which represents 8,000 companies that use private planes. ?This is an attempt to score some cheap political points on the back of an industry that employs 1.2 million people.?

Jet industry officials, in buttonholing sympathetic lawmakers and organizing an e-mail campaign in the past week to maintain the tax break, are making the case that raising taxes on jet ownership would inevitably cut jet production, endanger jobs and affect ordinary Americans.

Mr. Hubbard said it would be the Montana real estate broker, who relies on a plane to travel the state?s vast expanses, or the employee in Schenectady, N.Y., who makes jet upholstery, who would ultimately be harmed, not the jet-setting corporate executive that Democrats have focused on.

He said the industry was surprised by Mr. Obama?s focus on private jets ? the president mentioned the issue six times in a news conference last week ? because it was Mr. Obama who had helped create an expanded deduction last year for the industry as a way of creating jobs.

In fighting to hold on to the tax break, the industry has some major backers, with executives from Wal-Mart, J.P. Morgan and many other Fortune 500 companies all flying private jets.

Warren E. Buffett, the Omaha investor who leads Berkshire Hathaway, bought a plane-sharing business, now known as NetJets, after using its planes for a number of years. Asked in a CNBC interview on Thursday about tax breaks for corporate jets, Mr. Buffett declined to take a direct position but said that ?I don?t really see where a business aircraft is different? from other types of capital investments in how they should be taxed.

Political action committees and employees for jet manufacturers and related aviation sectors accounted for more than $6.6 million in political contributions to federal lawmakers in the last decade, according to an analysis by MapLight, a nonprofit group that analyzes campaign finance data.

But while Republicans accuse the White House of distorting the fiscal basis of the tax break for jets, they acknowledge that the issue carries a big political wallop in tough economic times.

?President Obama and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are obviously using poll-tested rhetoric about only raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires and corporate jets,? said Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona. ?That sounds good. They want ordinary Americans to believe they will not be affected by the president?s tax-increase proposals.?

Indeed, the embarrassing image of executives from the Big Three automakers flying to Washington in private jets in 2008 to ask for private bailout money looms large in the current debate. Democrats figure that trillion-dollar deficits are a tough concept for Americans to get their arms around. Tax breaks for corporate jet fliers and yacht owners, they say, are much easier.

?Yes, believe it or not, Uncle Sam subsidizes the purchase of sprawling, luxurious, 72-foot Viking yachts,? Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on the Senate floor in arguing to close what he sees as tax loopholes for jet and yacht owners. ?As long as your yacht has a place to sleep and a place to ? how shall I put it ? relieve yourself, you can classify it as your ?second home? and claim the mortgage interest deduction.?

The Democrats? scrutiny of tax breaks for jets, yachts and other luxury items is a calculated strategy meant to force the Republicans to give ground in their demands for big spending cuts in areas like Medicare, said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

?This was a very clear symbol of the fact that Republicans are willing to protect big-money interests and loopholes at any cost,? Mr. Van Hollen said. ?If Republicans are willing to dig in to protect tax breaks for corporate jets, they?re clearly not serious about deficit reduction.?

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Namco Bandai files suit over Witcher 2's European publishing rights

Namco Bandai has filed suit against Optimus SA, the parent company of CD Projekt Red, for breaching its contract agreement over the publishing rights to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Having served as the European publisher of the PC version, Namco believes it should distribute the upcoming Xbox 360 copy. Much to the company's dismay, THQ recently announced that it secured the EU publishing rights to The Witcher 2 for the Xbox 360.

That's further complicated by the fact that Atari will distribute the Xbox 360 version in the US, as Namco Bandai acquired Atari Europe a few years back. As a side issue, Namco also claims that CD Projekt Red violated its contract by removing the DRM from PC copy of The Witcher 2 without Namco's approval. CD Projekt Red eliminated the DRM in a patch earlier this year after it was determined to reduce in-game performance by up to 30%.

While the suit is pending, Namco is withholding a payment of ?1.255 million (roughly $1.8 million). Unfortunately for the disgruntled publisher, CD Projekt has dismissed the claims, asserting that it hasn't done anything wrong. Based on Google Translate, the developer says it won't be bullied over a couple million bucks and by delaying the payment, Namco is only setting itself up to dish out the interest later. CD Projekt hopes to settle out of court but says it will win if the case goes before a judge, and then Namco will have to eat the attorney's fees too.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44619-namco-bandai-files-suit-over-witcher-2s-european-publishing-rights.html

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Hard Lines iPhone Review

Hard Lines iPhone Review

Posted on 26th Jun 2011 at 10:44 by David Hing with 9 comments

Back when mobile phones were still thought of as a new idea, Nokia's 3210 was highly sought after in many circles for its built in version of the highly addictive game Snake. Fast forward a decade, and Hard Lines is attempting to be a worthy successor to that classic title.

The mechanics of Hard Lines are simple. With simple directional strokes of your finger, you steer a line around the screen towards randomly spawning markers, accruing points while avoiding other lines that enter from the sides of the screen.

Slick and neatly designed, Hard Lines is clearly influenced by the Light Cycles from Tron, yet it doesn't limit itself to that one style of play; there are several variations. In some modes, you gain points by getting opposing lines to crash into you or the walls; in others you race against the clock, or just try to last for as long as possible. There are also some good bonuses, such as the occasional power up that enables you to crash through any other competing lines without killing yourself.


The gameplay is occasionally made overly complicated, however, via the addition of dialogue that bikes may utter in the middle of a match. This appears as a single line of text and, while it's often funny, it's usually just a distraction that obscures your view.

Aside from this, though, the balancing is beautiful and the game manages to be both punishing and forgiving at once. Each line is only a single pixel wide, for example, but you only need to pass near an item on the screen to collect it, avoiding any frustrating situations where you might end up circling it forever. Not only this, but the very narrow nature of your line means the game can afford to throw a lot of competing lines at you at any one time. In particular, the Gauntlet mode continually spawns large numbers of other lines rapidly, resulting in an intense session that's highly satisfying when it goes your way.

Verdict: Hard Lines is a well designed, easily controlled, multifaceted version of Snake with enough new material and creativity behind it to stop it being called a straightforward clone.

Hard Lines is available from the AppStore for 59p / 99c.

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Readings: A slick way to read articles by any author or publisher. GReader replacement?

Readings is a super slick site that lets you follow news from any publisher or author and read it in style. At first glance, it?s sort of like Facebook meets Google Reader, but it looks much better than either one.

The basic concept is that you can choose to follow a publisher, like The Next Web, or an individual author, like me! Then, Readings will go out and grab the content from that publisher or writer and display it in a clean, easy to read digest style. You can sort by time, plow through articles in groupings that are sorted by popularity and save items for later reading.

One of the coolest things about Readings is that, if you follow an author, it will show you all of the content available for that person, regardless of what site they wrote the articles for. This is a great way to read everything that your favorite author writes even if some of it is on sites that you normally don?t visit in your normal routine.

Readings displays pictures, text and video in a clean, reformatted UI that gives you easy access to stories without the clutter. The stories are automatically curated to filter in the top stories from a publisher and you can easily search content from within your sources, allowing you to get your favorite sites? take on a topic, rather than being inundated with every result from Google.

I?ve only been using Readings for a short time, but I?m impressed so far. I can already see recommending it to people that are interested in seeing everything I write, (hi Mom!) without having to manually go to a site and click on my name to get a list by author.

We?ll be back with a deeper review shortly but for now,  Readings has just entered public beta so you can head on over to the site now to check it out. You can start reading and playing right away but if you want to save items for later, you?ll have to create a login.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/07/09/readings-a-slick-clever-way-to-read-articles-by-any-author-or-publisher-google-reader-replacement/

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Amazon orders 1.2 million tablets, more than all companies but Apple

Upstream component suppliers for tablets have been gearing up their preparation of needed parts and components for models to be launched in Q3 2011. Shipments are expected to top 21 million to 22 million units in the third quarter, compared to 13.5 million to 14.5 millions shipped in the second, according to industry source cited by DigiTimes.

The biggest vendor apart from Apple will be a new company to enter the tablet scene: Amazon. The online retailer giant supposedly has the most positive orders, with demand for touch panels likely to reach 2 million units for the August-September period, and shipments of tablet PCs to Amazon expected to reach 1 million to 1.2 million units (a conservative estimate). Still, this is nothing compared to Apple, which is expected to receive 14 million to 15 million iPads from Foxconn in the third quarter.

Last month, we heard Amazon could launch tablet models in August 2011 or September 2011, with targeted global sales of 4 million units for 2011. Quanta Computer would assembe processors developed by Texas Instruments, Taiwan-based Wintek's touch panels, and ILI Technology's LCD driver ICs. Amazon would also reportedly provide streaming movie services for users of its tablets (this is new).

Two months ago, a rumor talked about two different tablets before the end of 2011: an entry-level tablet codenamed Coyote (based on the dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 platform) and a second tablet codenamed Hollywood (based on the quad-core Nvidia codename Kal-El platform, which is likely to be called Tegra 3). Other specifications, such as screen sizes, are still unknown.

The rumor that Amazon is looking to build a tablet has been around for a while but it started to gain steam three months ago, when it was suggested that Samsung would build an Android tablet for the online retailer. Amazon's president and CEO Jeff Bezos has noted that a potential Amazon tablet would be more likely to supplement than to supplant the Kindle.

The Kindle is the best-selling product on Amazon, and the company likely wants to keep pushing forward with it, but sporting a further reduced price tag. This would attract demand from the education and consumer market, while the more expensive and more powerful tablet would be able to take on the broader market outside of the e-book reader space. In addition to the Kindle ecosystem, the company has the Amazon Android App Store, its Cloud Drive service, and is in the meantime making sure to support its Kindle app on tablets.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44612-amazon-orders-12-million-tablets-more-than-all-companies-but-apple.html

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Will Republican Race?s First In Be the First Out?

No contender for the Republican nomination has followed the conventional playbook more than Mr. Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota who began introducing himself two years ago during a prospecting trip to Iowa. Yet his path has been complicated by fresher faces, an unruly nominating contest and a handful of missteps that swallowed his summer momentum.

The voting will not open for at least six months, but Mr. Pawlenty knows that his performance at the Iowa Straw Poll on Aug. 13 ? fair or not ? will help determine whether his candidacy accelerates or lands in the annals of Republican presidential hopefuls like Elizabeth Dole, Lamar Alexander and Dan Quayle whose campaigns were extinguished here.

The sense of urgency was apparent as Mr. Pawlenty made the case to Republicans that an experienced candidate was preferable to an intriguing one. If Michele Bachmann, his fellow Minnesotan, was on his mind, he did not say so directly, but there was little mistaking his point.

In stop after stop, from a town meeting at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake to a speech at Hickory?s Hall in Ames, Mr. Pawlenty argued that the election of Barack Obama, a state senator-turned-United States senator, offered Exhibit A for why Republicans should choose a nominee with executive governing experience.

?He never ran anything, never did anything and we put him in the Oval Office and wonder why it?s not working,? Mr. Pawlenty said, speaking at a county Republican dinner here. ?It?s not working because he duped the country into thinking he was a reasonable candidate.?

Mr. Pawlenty, who stumbled at the first major presidential debate and has struggled to raise money, came to Iowa to refocus his campaign. After clearing his head during a Fourth of July fishing trip with his family in the remote Arrowhead Region of Minnesota, he settled in for a five-week stretch that is critical to his candidacy.

His television advertisements are on the air, reprising his role in cutting spending and shutting down the Minnesota government during a 2004 transit strike. Glossy brochures are arriving in mailboxes, declaring, ?Leadership isn?t about fancy speeches and empty promises.? A new slogan made its debut: ?Results not rhetoric.?

Few candidates make it to the White House without weathering a difficult period ? as President Obama could testify. But Mr. Pawlenty has an extra set of challenges: he is building the best ground-level organization of any campaign around, but has struggled to tap into the new grass-roots energy coursing through the Republican Party and finding it difficult to secure early commitments because the field is still developing.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Pawlenty said he saw no reason to retool his campaign. ?This is like a runway where you start to pick up speed and take off ? I think that?s what we?re doing,? he said. He declined to say whether he believes Mrs. Bachmann has the experience to be president, adding, ?She?s a fellow Minnesotan, so we?re not looking to say things or do things that are disrespectful to her.?

Mrs. Bachmann, who is serving her third term in Congress, is riding a new wave of excitement among conservatives and Tea Party activists and is also looking to break out at the straw poll.

Republicans are still waiting to hear whether Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska will run. Even if they did, neither would be judged by the straw poll, unlike Mr. Pawlenty, who decided months ago to double down on the event to jump-start his candidacy.

Mitt Romney, who won the event four years ago in his first bid for the White House, decided to skip the straw poll this year. So Mr. Pawlenty is largely replicating Mr. Romney?s 2007 strategy by building a sophisticated turnout operation, recruiting supporters to spend the day in Ames and to cast their ballots during a daylong carnival.

He asked voters to treat the straw poll with as much seriousness as Election Day.

?We want to make sure that the person that Iowa puts forward in this race is not just interesting in that moment,? he said, ?but is someone who can become the nominee and can defeat Barack Obama and serve at a historically important level and be president of the United States.?

The message resonated with George P. Foote, 68, who came to see Mr. Pawlenty at a stop in Ames on Wednesday evening. Mr. Foote said he was pleasantly surprised at the candidate?s depth and grasp of wide-ranging issues. ?He?s so real,? he said. ?I would like to vote for somebody like him.?

Mr. Pawlenty is seeking to demonstrate his preparedness by taking a nearly unlimited stream of questions from voters and reporters. He gave detailed answers on military engagement in Libya, the debt ceiling, immigration and other topics. He met with the editorial boards of The Des Moines Register, The Globe Gazette of Mason City and The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.

Mr. Pawlenty is still working to shake the impression ? an incorrect one, he argues ? that he is not forceful or strong enough to challenge his Republican rivals and, ultimately, Mr. Obama. The storyline began dogging him after he declined to tangle with Mr. Romney over health care at a debate but later conceded he had not been tough enough.

At one gathering on Thursday, a man rose to offer vociferous praise of Mr. Pawlenty?s command of foreign policy and domestic issues, but urged him to adopt a tougher style

?The loudest guy or woman in a bar usually isn?t the toughest ? they?re usually just the loudest,? Mr. Pawlenty replied. He said he was striving to adopt a Ronald Reagan air of strength. ?You don?t have to be a jerk to be strong,? he said. ?You can be nice and strong.?

As he sipped coffee during an interview earlier in the day, he used almost the exact same words to answer a question about his reaction to the ?Minnesota nice? narrative that has settled over his candidacy. He said his record, which includes many stand-offs with Democrats in his state, provided plenty of evidence of his ability to fight.

?I concede that my entertainment quotient isn?t as high as Donald Trump?s,? he said, ?but compared to the people in the race who actually might be president, it?s at least as high as theirs.?

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Hard Lines iPhone Review

Hard Lines iPhone Review

Posted on 26th Jun 2011 at 10:44 by David Hing with 9 comments

Back when mobile phones were still thought of as a new idea, Nokia's 3210 was highly sought after in many circles for its built in version of the highly addictive game Snake. Fast forward a decade, and Hard Lines is attempting to be a worthy successor to that classic title.

The mechanics of Hard Lines are simple. With simple directional strokes of your finger, you steer a line around the screen towards randomly spawning markers, accruing points while avoiding other lines that enter from the sides of the screen.

Slick and neatly designed, Hard Lines is clearly influenced by the Light Cycles from Tron, yet it doesn't limit itself to that one style of play; there are several variations. In some modes, you gain points by getting opposing lines to crash into you or the walls; in others you race against the clock, or just try to last for as long as possible. There are also some good bonuses, such as the occasional power up that enables you to crash through any other competing lines without killing yourself.


The gameplay is occasionally made overly complicated, however, via the addition of dialogue that bikes may utter in the middle of a match. This appears as a single line of text and, while it's often funny, it's usually just a distraction that obscures your view.

Aside from this, though, the balancing is beautiful and the game manages to be both punishing and forgiving at once. Each line is only a single pixel wide, for example, but you only need to pass near an item on the screen to collect it, avoiding any frustrating situations where you might end up circling it forever. Not only this, but the very narrow nature of your line means the game can afford to throw a lot of competing lines at you at any one time. In particular, the Gauntlet mode continually spawns large numbers of other lines rapidly, resulting in an intense session that's highly satisfying when it goes your way.

Verdict: Hard Lines is a well designed, easily controlled, multifaceted version of Snake with enough new material and creativity behind it to stop it being called a straightforward clone.

Hard Lines is available from the AppStore for 59p / 99c.

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