System76, the Denver-based Linux PC manufacturer and developer of Pop OS, has some stellar news for those of us who prefer our laptops a little more open. Later this month the company will begin shipping two of their laptop models with its Coreboot-powered open source firmware. The Darter Pro laptop System76 Beginning today, System76 will Read more about System76 Will Begin Shipping 2 Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open Source Firmware[…]

Scientists at MIT built a 16-bit microprocessor out of carbon nanotubes and even ran a program on it, a new paper reports. Silicon-based computer processors seem to be approaching a limit to how small they can be scaled, so researchers are looking for other materials that might make for useful processors. It appears that transistors Read more about MIT Researchers Build Functional Carbon Nanotube Microprocessor[…]

Excess heat given off by smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices can be annoying, but beyond that it contributes to malfunctions and, in extreme cases, can even cause lithium batteries to explode. To guard against such ills, engineers often insert glass, plastic or even layers of air as insulation to prevent heat-generating components like microprocessors Read more about Researchers build a heat shield just 10 atoms thick to protect electronic devices[…]

By activating a dormant software lock on their newest iPhones, Apple is effectively announcing a drastic new policy: only Apple batteries can go in iPhones, and only they can install them. If you replace the battery in the newest iPhones, a message indicating you need to service your battery appears in Settings > Battery, next Read more about Apple Is Locking iPhone Batteries to Discourage Repair, showing ominous errors if you replace your battery[…]

Contemporary science, medicine, engineering and information technology demand efficient processing of data—still images, sound and radio signals, as well as information coming from different sensors and cameras. Since the 1970s, this has been achieved by means of the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm (FFT). The FFT makes it possible to efficiently compress and transmit data, store Read more about Quantum interference allows huge data sets to be sifted through much more quickly[…]

On newer Linux distributions, there’s a hard regression either within the kernel but more likely some cross-kernel/user-space interaction issue leaving newer Linux distributions unbootable. While Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and older Linux distributions boot Zen 2, to date I have not been able to successfully boot the likes of Ubuntu 19.04, Manjaro Linux, and Fedora Workstation Read more about AMD Ryzen 7 3700X + Ryzen 9 3900X Offer Incredible Linux Performance – if you can get it to boot. Which newer distros seemingly can’t[…]

The ZenBook Pro Duo has not one, but two 4K screens. (At least if you’re counting horizontal pixels.) There’s a 15-inch 16:9 OLED panel where you’d normally find the display on a laptop, then a 32:9 IPS “ScreenPad Plus” screen directly above the keyboard that’s the same width and half the height. It’s as if Read more about The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo laptop with two 4K screens – for some reason people are comparing to Apples touch bar, but has nothing to do with that.[…]

A person’s “right to repair” their own equipment may well become a US election issue, with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders making it a main talking point during his tour of Iowa. “Are you ready for something truly insane?” the veteran politician’s account tweeted on Sunday, “Farmers aren’t allowed to repair their own tractors without paying Read more about Tractors, not phones, will (maybe) get America a right-to-repair law at this rate: Bernie slams ‘truly insane’ situation[…]

Aweigh is an open navigation system that does not rely on satellites: it is inspired by the mapping of celestial bodies and the polarized vision of insects. Ancient seafarers and desert ants alike use universally accessible skylight to organize, orient, and place themselves in the world. Aweigh is a project that learns from the past Read more about Aweigh – open source navigation system without satellites[…]

In February, the company announced its intention to move forward with the development of the Curie cable, a new undersea line stretching from California to Chile. It will be the first private intercontinental cable ever built by a major non-telecom company. And if you step back and just look at intracontinental cables, Google has fully financed Read more about Google and other tech giants are quietly buying up the most important part of the internet[…]

Researchers at the Black Hat Asia conference this week disclosed a previously unknown way to tap into the inner workings of Intel’s chip hardware. The duo of Mark Ermolov and Maxim Goryachy from Positive Technologies explained how a secret Chipzilla system known as Visualization of Internal Signals Architecture (VISA) allows folks to peek inside the Read more about The hidden backdoor in Intel processors is a fascinating debug port (you have to pwner to use it anyway)[…]

Canadian startup D-Wave Systems has extended the availability of its Leap branded cloud-based quantum computing service to Europe and Japan. With Leap, researchers will be granted free access to a live D-Wave 2000Q machine with – it is claimed – 2,000 quantum bits, or qubits. Developers will also be free to use the company’s Quantum Read more about Europe, Japan: D-Wave would really like you to play with its ‘2,000-qubit’ quantum Leap cloud service[…]

Microsoft has helped build the first device that automatically encodes digital information into DNA and back to bits again. DNA storage: Microsoft has been working toward a photocopier-size device that would replace data centers by storing files, movies, and documents in DNA strands, which can pack in information at mind-boggling density. According to Microsoft, all Read more about Microsoft just booted up the first “DNA drive” for storing data[…]

Scientists from Heriot-Watt University have welded glass and metal together using an ultrafast laser system, in a breakthrough for the manufacturing industry. Various optical materials such as quartz, borosilicate glass and even sapphire were all successfully welded to metals like aluminium, titanium and stainless steel using the Heriot-Watt laser system, which provides very short, picosecond Read more about Welding glass to metal breakthrough could transform manufacturing[…]

A team of Cambridge researchers have found a way to control the sea of nuclei in semiconductor quantum dots so they can operate as a quantum memory device. Quantum dots are crystals made up of thousands of atoms, and each of these atoms interacts magnetically with the trapped electron. If left alone to its own Read more about Physicists get thousands of semiconductor nuclei to do ‘quantum dances’ in unison[…]

One day, hospital patients might be able to ingest tiny robots that deliver drugs directly to diseased tissue, thanks to research being carried out at EPFL and ETH Zurich. A group of scientists led by Selman Sakar at EPFL and Bradley Nelson at ETH Zurich drew inspiration from bacteria to design smart, highly flexible biocompatible Read more about Researchers develop smart micro-robots that can adapt to their surroundings[…]

A team of Japanese researchers from Keio University in Tokyo have demonstrated that an amoeba is capable of generating approximate solutions to a remarkably difficult math problem known as the “traveling salesman problem.” The traveling salesman problem goes like this: Given an arbitrary number of cities and the distances between them, what is the shortest Read more about An Amoeba-Based Computer Calculated Approximate Solutions to an 8 city Travelling Salesman Problem[…]

A new approach to controlling magnetism in a microchip could open the doors to memory, computing, and sensing devices that consume drastically less power than existing versions. The approach could also overcome some of the inherent physical limitations that have been slowing progress in this area until now. Researchers at MIT and at Brookhaven National Read more about Study opens route to ultra-low-power microchips[…]

In a statement on Wednesday, the Italian competition authority, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), said both companies had violated consumer protection laws by “inducing customers to install updates on devices that are not able to adequately support them.” It fined Apple €10m ($11.4m): €5m for slowing down the iPhone 6 with Read more about Apple, Samsung fined in Italy for slowing people’s phones.[…]

Why is Xiaomi’s fitness tracker detecting a heartbeat from a roll of toilet paper? Weibo users are confused, but the answer isn’t as wild as it seems Does a roll of toilet paper have a heart? Obviously not. So why does Xiaomi’s fitness band display a heart rate when it’s wrapped around a roll of Read more about Why are Xiaomi’s fitness tracker and Apple watches detecting a heartbeat from a roll of toilet paper and bananas?[…]

Researchers from Linköping University and the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have proposed a new device concept that can efficiently transfer the information carried by electron spin to light at room temperature—a stepping stone toward future information technology. They present their approach in an article in Nature Communications. Light and electron charge are the Read more about Nanoscale pillars as a building block for future information technology[…]

Over on the EEVblog, someone noticed an interesting chip that’s been apparently flying under our radar for a while. This is an ARM processor capable of running Linux. It’s hand-solderable in a TQFP package, has a built-in Mali GPU, support for a touch panel, and has support for 512MB of DDR3. If you do it Read more about A $1, Linux-Capable, Hand-Solderable Processor[…]

Metals are widely used for antennas; however, their bulkiness limits the fabrication of thin, lightweight, and flexible antennas. Recently, nanomaterials such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, and conductive polymers came into play. However, poor conductivity limits their use. We show RF devices for wireless communication based on metallic two-dimensional (2D) titanium carbide (MXene) prepared by a Read more about 2D spray on transparent wireless antennae created[…]

Lenovo is making it easier for their customers running Linux to update their firmware now on ThinkPad, ThinkStation, and ThinkCenter hardware. Lenovo has joined the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) and following collaboration with the upstream developers is beginning to roll-out support for offering their device firmware on this platform so it can be easily Read more about Lenovo To Make Their BIOS/UEFI Updates Easier For Linux Users Via LVFS[…]

There are, to date, seven different HDMI versions, starting with 1.0, which was introduced back in 2002, and currently ending with 2.1, which was only announced back in November of 2017. The amount of bandwidth each each version is capable of supporting, as well as any additional cool features a version may possess, is decided Read more about You Are Probably Using the Wrong HDMI Cord[…]