The phone-in-the-closet phenomenon has become a hidden store of e-waste; a two-year-old phone still has value and is still a powerful device. And so it’s great news that Samsung is starting a new “Upcycling” initiative that is designed to turn old smartphones and turn them into something brand new.Behold, for example, this bitcoin mining rig, Read more about Samsung repurposes old phones – bitcoin miner, fishtank monitor, promises to open up[…]

Manufacturing of the Kinect has shut down. Originally created for the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s watershed depth camera and voice recognition microphone sold ~35 million units since its debut in 2010, but Microsoft will no longer produce it when retailers sell off their existing stock. The company will continue to support Kinect for customers on Xbox, but Read more about Exclusive: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect[…]

During a routine periodic fire suppression system maintenance, an unexpected release of inert fire suppression agent occurred. When suppression was triggered, it initiated the automatic shutdown of Air Handler Units (AHU) as designed for containment and safety. While conditions in the data center were being reaffirmed and AHUs were being restarted, the ambient temperature in Read more about Azure fell over for 7 hours in Europe because someone accidentally set off the fire extinguishers[…]

Tosi’s conceptual breakthrough is the creation of an entirely new type of qubit, using both the nucleus and the electron. In this approach, a qubit ‘0’ state is defined when the spin of the electron is down and the nucleus spin is up, while the ‘1’ state is when the electron spin is up, and Read more about Flip-flop qubits: Radical new quantum computing design invented[…]

Antennas receive information by resonating with EM waves, which they convert into electrical voltage. For such resonance to occur, a traditional antenna’s length must roughly match the wavelength of the EM wave it receives, meaning that the antenna must be relatively big. However, like a guitar string, an antenna can also resonate with acoustic waves. Read more about Mini-antennas 100,000 x more efficient, could be used for brain interface machinery, anything tiny.[…]

The Debian advisory says affected users need to disable hyper-threading “immediately” in their BIOS or UEFI settings, because the processors can “dangerously misbehave when hyper-threading is enabled.” Symptoms can include “application and system misbehaviour, data corruption, and data loss”. Henrique de Moraes Holschuh, who authored the Debian post, notes that all operating systems, not only Read more about Intel’s Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs have nasty microcode bug[…]

We present simple tongues consisting of fluorescent polyelectrolytes or chimeric green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) to discriminating 33 different whiskies according to their country of origin (Ireland, US, or Scotland), brand, blend status (blend or single malt), age, and taste (rich or light). The mechanism of action for these tongues is differential quenching of the fluorescence Read more about Artificial tongues can discriminate between whiskeys[…]

A pioneering new technique that encourages the wonder material graphene to “talk” could revolutionise the global audio and telecommunications industries. Researchers from the University of Exeter have devised a ground-breaking method to use graphene to generate complex and controllable sound signals. In essence, it combines speaker, amplifier and graphic equaliser into a chip the size Read more about Good vibrations no longer needed for speakers as research encourages graphene to talk[…]

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China created a quantum device, called a boson sampling machine, that can now carry out calculations for five photons, but at a speed 24,000 times faster than previous experiments. Pan Jianwei, the lead scientist on the project, said that though their device was already (only) 10 Read more about China makes much fastest quantum computer[…]

Ranasinghe and his team used an RGB colour sensor and a pH sensor to capture the colour and acidity of a freshly poured glass of lemonade. This data was sent to a special tumbler in another location that was filled with water. An electrode around the rim of the tumbler mimicked the sourness of the Read more about Virtual lemonade sends colour and taste to a glass of water[…]

ntel’s new Optane memory is, according to Intel, an entirely new type of computer memory. It’s based on the 3D Xpoint memory architecture Intel announced back in July 2015. It’s as fast as the DRAM memory found in every computer used today, but as stable as the NAND memory found in the SSDs central to Read more about Intel Claims Optane Memory Will Speed Your Computer Up for Cheap[…]

IBM Q is an industry-first initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers for business and science. While technologies like AI can find patterns buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be seen and the number of possibilities that you need to explore to Read more about IBM Q opens up usage of their quantum computer[…]

Scientists have trained a quantum computer to recognize trees. That may not seem like a big deal, but the result means that researchers are a step closer to using such computers for complicated machine learning problems like pattern recognition and computer vision. The team used a D-Wave 2X computer, an advanced model from the Burnaby, Read more about Quantum computer learns to ‘see’ trees[…]

In a pilot starting in the north of the Netherlands, Weee Nederland is asking packet couriers to accept old electronics after delivering packages. Hopefully for recycling. If so, this sounds really good. Pakketbezorger neemt oude apparaten mee

The availability of a universal quantum computer may have a fundamental impact on a vast number of research fields and on society as a whole. An increasingly large scientific and industrial community is working toward the realization of such a device. An arbitrarily large quantum computer may best be constructed using a modular approach. We Read more about Blueprint for a microwave trapped ion quantum computer released[…]

Backblaze has recorded and saved daily hard drive statistics from the drives in our data centers since April 2013. At the end of 2016 we had 73,653 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,553 boot drives and 72,100 data drives. […] In 2016, three drives models ended the year with zero failures, albeit Read more about 2016 Hard Drive Reliabilty Benchmark Stats by Backblaze[…]

It starts with the type of headset you need. You have PNR = passive noise reduction, ANR = active noise reduction and earpiece type headsets. PNR relies on the shell and the seal (which is gel or foam [gel when broken will leak and requires a full replacement of the seal, foam will live through Read more about Aviation Headsets Guide[…]

Graphene, which was heretofore, the strongest material known to man, is made from an extremely thin sheet of carbon atoms arranged in two dimensions. But there’s one drawback: while notable for its thinness and unique electrical properties, it’s very difficult to create useful, three-dimensional materials out of graphene. Now, a team of MIT researchers discovered Read more about MIT Unveils New Material That’s Strongest and Lightest On Earth[…]

Since 2013, Backblaze has published statistics and insights based on the hard drives in our data center. You’ll find links to those reports below. We also publish the data underlying these reports, so that anyone can reproduce them. You’ll find an overview of this data and the download links further down this page. Source: Hard Read more about Hard Drive Test Data – Determining Failure Rates and More[…]

The team, led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, designed the minuscule transistor with a working one-nanometre gate – far surpassing any industry expectation for reducing transistor sizes. In the scientific study, MoS2 transistors with 1-nanometer gate lengths, published today in the journal Science, the researchers describe a prototype device which Read more about Transistor smashes industry ‘limit’, measures just 1nm[…]

what the researchers achieved was to sense movement finely enough to distinguish American Sign Language down the the digit level at better than 90 per cent; and better than 82 per cent for “single individual number text input”. […] The researchers say the “micro motions” involved in finger gestures cause “a unique pattern in the Read more about using WiFi to detect finger movements[…]

An open source, physically secure personal computer. Source: ORWL – The First Open Source, Physically Secure Computer | Crowd Supply

Have you ever wondered if those miracle sprays that promise to protect the liner of your pickup truck from damage actually work? Here’s proof they do. The amateur scientists at YouTube’s How Ridiculous covered a watermelon in Line-X spray and dropped it off a 150-feet tall tower. Not only did the watermelon survive the fall, Read more about Miraculous Spray-On Coating Protects a Watermelon From a 150-Foot Drop[…]

DuoSkin is a fabrication process that enables anyone to create customized functional devices that can be attached directly on their skin. Using gold metal leaf, a material that is cheap, skin-friendly, and robust for everyday wear, we demonstrate three types of on-skin interfaces: sensing touch input, displaying output, and wireless communication. Source: DuoSkin | MIT Read more about DuoSkin – turn a temporary gold tattoo into a controller, communicator or display[…]

Hello! Stratux is a homebuilt ADS-B In receiver for pilots. It’s easy to assemble from inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware, and probably already works with your electronic flight bag (EFB) of choice. Even better, if you’re so inclined, the software is open-source and hackable so you can build the system that’s right for you. Source: Stratux by Read more about Stratux: DIY ADS-B aircraft receiver on Raspberry Pi[…]