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Trexa announces surprisingly affordable base price for EV platform – “Now that the initial excitement over the new Trexa electric vehicle (EV) platform has subsided somewhat, the start-up has decided to issue information that is typically a bit more sobering, the price. In this case however, the six digits just might create much ado anew. How does $15,999 grab you? Yeah, us too…”
Physics of curling – Nice explanation of what causes a curling stone to deviate from a straight path…
Israel unveils new drone fleet that can reach Iran – “The Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters), making them the size of Boeing 737 passenger jets and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel’s military. The planes can fly at least 20 consecutive hours and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads…”
Behind the Windows 7 memory usage scaremongering – “It was claimed yesterday that Windows 7 machines are “alarmingly low” on memory, with 86 percent of Windows 7 machines using 90-95 percent of their physical memory. Craig Barth, CTO of Devil Mountain Software, a company developing performance monitoring software, cited data from his company’s XPnet community. Community members use a freely downloadable tool that periodically uploads performance data to the XPnet servers, and it’s this data, from a few tens of thousands of computers, that was used to justify the claim…”
Ubi DRM: Their side of the story – “Ubisoft requires that all of their games need an always on internet connection, as part of a new DRM and online services platform. We put your questions about their always-online DRM to Ubisoft in a phone interview last night. Their answers are below…”
MIT’s Flyfire – Miniature Helicopters Turn Sky into Digital Screen – “Robots may be taking your place on the factory floor, but they’re also aiming for higher goals: replacing fireworks and conquering the sky…”
Using Facebook or Twitter ‘could raise your insurance premiums by 10pc’ – “People who use social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook have been warned that they could eventually face rises in their home insurance premiums of as much as 10pc…”
Official: FBI probing Pa. school webcam spy case – “A Pennsylvania school district accused of secretly switching on laptop computer webcams inside students’ homes is under investigation by federal authorities, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press…”
Russians Close to Reaching Lake Vostok – “Russian scientists have 100 meters of ice left to drill in order to reach the waters of the unique subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica. The scientists expect to reach the lake in 2010-2011. To make future research more effective, they have made a three-dimensional map of the shore and bottom of the lake, said Valery Lukin, head of the Russian Antarctic Expedition…”
Futuristic Minority Report computer interface makes a real-life debut – “It’s Project Natal meets the iPhone, only way better. In fact, it’s the same computer interface you saw in Minority Report. What’s best is that it looks like this game-changing technology could become ubiquitous in a few years time…”
The RV870 Story: AMD Showing up to the Fight – “We all knew that the RV870 was going to launch sometime before the end of the year, and we’re normally briefed on new GPUs around a month or so before we get hardware. The rumors said that the launch had been pushed back, but just like clockwork I got a call in June or July of last year. It was my old friend, Chris Hook of AMD PR…”
Nvidia’s Fermi GTX480 is broken and unfixable – “WITH ANOTHER LAUNCH of the Nvidia GT300 Fermi GF100 GTX480 upon us, it is time for an update on the status of that wayward part. Production parts have been coming back from TSMC for several weeks now, and the outlook for them is grim…”
A machine that prints organs is coming to market – “THE great hope of transplant surgeons is that they will, one day, be able to order replacement body parts on demand. At the moment, a patient may wait months, sometimes years, for an organ from a suitable donor. During that time his condition may worsen. He may even die. The ability to make organs as they are needed would not only relieve suffering but also save lives. And that possibility may be closer with the arrival of the first commercial 3D bio-printer for manufacturing human tissue and organs…”
Curiosity: NASA’s Epic New Mars Rover – “Mars rovers “Spirit” and “Opportunity” were successful beyond NASA’s wildest dreams. Now they’re building a new, nuclear-powered Mini Cooper-sized rover to be lowered onto Mars by a hovering drop ship in 2013. Meet “Curiosity,” the new Mars Science Laboratory…”
10 Ways Windows Phone 7 Series Trumps the iPhone – “Microsoft may not release Windows Phone 7 Series to phone manufacturers and users until late 2010, but already the software is impressing some. Some of its many innovations might even beat out the iPhone. We take a look at how it accomplishes that and what it means for smartphone users and producers…”
For New Multiplayer AR Game, Smart Phones Connect to Each Other Without a Cell Network – “Smart phones have become all the rage among U.S. warfighters who want to stay in contact with each other and drone buddies, but their phones still rely upon having available 3G or Wi-Fi networks. That may change with a new mobile system that create a direct network between two Google Android phones without an additional server, according to Technology Review…”
Hacking Impresario: ‘Windows Safer Than Mac’ – “The organizer of the Pwn2Own hacking contest claims Windows 7 beats Snow Leopard for security, and that Safari will fail in the upcoming hacking contest. ..”
Kevin Kelly tells technology’s epic story – “In this wide-ranging, thought-provoking talk from TEDxAmsterdam, Kevin Kelly muses on what technology means in our lives — from its impact at the personal level to its place in the cosmos…”
The Digital Dictatorship – “It’s fashionable to hold up the Internet as the road to democracy and liberty in countries like Iran, but it can also be a very effective tool for quashing freedom. Evgeny Morozov on the myth of the techno-utopia…”
It’s Official: Google Can Sell Power Like a Utility – “Why does Google want to do this? Right now, the company rakes in billions of dollars from ads and it doesn’t have to have extensive support desks and remote repair teams — the kind of people-power providers must have on staff — in order to do it. Selling power is a much more hands-on business….”
Apple’s Jobs Says Flash Crashes Macs; No Flash for iPad, iPhone Planned – “Apple has its reasons. Flash on a base level provides a very real threat to Apple’s lucrative App Store, one of the key things that it uses to differentiate the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad from its competitors. If Apple adopted Flash, many of its developers could move to Flash which would free them of the restrictions of Apple’s App Store approval process. And that would ultimately ruin the exclusivity of Apple’s app catalog and make Apple vulnerable to handsets with superior hardware. Also, with Flash customers could simply view TV episodes from Hulu for free, rather than buy them from Apple’s iTunes store….”
America’s Wind Energy Potential Triples in New Estimate – “Current wind technology deployed in nonenvironmentally protected areas could generate 37,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to the new analysis conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and consulting firm AWS Truewind. The last comprehensive estimate came out in 1993, when Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pegged the wind energy potential of the United States at 10,777,000 gigawatt-hours. Both numbers are greater than the 3,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity currently consumed by Americans each year…”
The Complexity of the U.S. Tax System – “As you already know the U.S. tax system is complicated. So complicated that in 1913 the tax code was 400 pages and today it’s 70,320 pages long. But instead of me rambling on for hours, I thought it would be fun to explain the complexity of the U.S. tax system in a visual format…”
The Sun dog and the sonic boom:
Buy Green: Shower Head – “Soap up under these five efficient showerheads–at a fraction of the cost and water consumption…”
30 Useful (and Unknown) Web Apps You Need to Bookmark – “At Maximum PC, computer hardware is our bread and butter. We review it, preview it, and just generally love to talk about it. Unfortunately, hardware becomes less important with each passing day, as more and more software moves onto the internet. We’re not looking forward to the day that our PC’s become Chrome OS-style thin client, but we have to admit, some web apps are pretty awesome…”
Study: URL typos earn Google $497 million per year – “Google could be earning some $497 million a year from the registered owners of Web site addresses that mimic typographical errors in existing sites, according to a new study…”
Sun-powered water splitter makes hydrogen tirelessly – “Sunlight + water = hydrogen gas, in a new technique that can convert 60 per cent of sunlight energy absorbed by an electrode into the inflammable fuel…”
What Came ‘Before’ the Big Bang? Leading Physicist Presents a Radical Theory – “Galaxy-iphone-wallpaper String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the cosmos we live in was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes…”
The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough? – “In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that’s inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard…”
Fleeting Youth, Fading Creativity – “Youth and creativity have long been interwoven; as Samuel Johnson once said, “Youth is the time of enterprise and hope.” Unburdened by old habits and prejudices, a mind in fresh bloom is poised to see the world anew and come up with fresh innovations—solutions to problems that have sometimes eluded others for ages. The future director of the Manhattan Project made his first important discovery around the age of 23. Such innovation could be at risk in modern science, as the number of successful young scientists dramatically shrinks…”
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