Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: Extreme Tech- Page Two

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Extreme Tech- Page Two

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UK supermarket will be the first to disconnect from the grid, use electricity generated entirely by its own rotten food July 22, 2014 at 1:51 pm
A grocery store in the UK will become the world’s first to be powered entirely by its own food waste. At the end of the day, any leftover food — after the good stuff has been given to charity — will be transported to a nearby anaerobic digester, where it will be turned into electricity and sent back to the store via a privately owned one-mile-long power line. When the anaerobic digester is turned on, the grocery store will sever all connections to the national power grid and rely purely on the electricity generated by bacteria feasting on rotten food. Cool.
MIT creates graphite ‘solar sponge’ that converts sunlight into steam with 85% efficiency July 22, 2014 at 11:33 am
MIT is reporting that it has created a new, cheap material — using a microwave, no less — that converts sunlight into steam with an amazing 85% efficiency. This could have major repercussions in the realms of desalination and sterilization, and perhaps for concentrated solar thermal power generation as well.
How to use a VPN to boost your Netflix performance – even if you’re not a Verizon customer July 22, 2014 at 10:15 am
Can using a VPN improve your streaming video performance, even if you aren’t on Verizon? We investigate.
Nvidia launches new Tegra K1 Shield Tablet and separate gamepad, priced rather optimistically at $360 July 22, 2014 at 9:08 am
Nvidia’s new Shield is dropping today and the updated tablet packs a number of high-end features. Will gamers bite, considering the increased price tag but better use cases?
Move aside, Segway: Honda’s Uni-Cub could make walking a thing of the past July 22, 2014 at 8:02 am
Behold, the future of personal mobility devices: The Honda Uni-Cub. The Uni-Cub, which is self-balancing and has zero turning radius, is essentially a sit-on Segway without any handlebars. Most importantly, the Uni-Cub is much smaller and easier to maneuver than the Segway, allowing for Uni-Cub users to ride alongside or even within a pack of pedestrians. The main usage scenario for the Uni-Cub is moving around internal spaces, such as offices and museums: Not only is it easier and faster than walking, but compared to other personal mobility devices it also leaves your hands free to operate a smartphone or some other implement of your choosing.
ET deals: $320 off Lenovo Y40 Core i7 laptop with R9 M275 graphics July 21, 2014 at 5:12 pm
The Y40 packs a powerhouse combination of a Core i7-4510U processor and 2GB AMD Radeon R9 M275 GPU, which provide plenty of power to keep your frame rates up with current games. This laptop also sports a 1080p anti-glare display, and all those extra pixels serve not just to give you a crisp picture, but also a handy advantage over any 720p laptop gamers out there who have to work with less real estate.
Handheld device allows anyone to instantly test drinks for date rape drugs July 21, 2014 at 4:35 pm
Date rape drugs are shockingly commonplace in nightclubs, college campuses, and private parties across the world. To help solve this problem, a small team from Toronto, Ontario is crowdfunding the pd.id — the “personal drink ID.” With a device the size of a thumb drive, anyone can test to see if a drink has been tampered with.
Air Force One finally upgrades its 1980s Reagan-era phone system July 21, 2014 at 1:47 pm
Air Force One — the US President’s flying fortress — which has been using the same clunky handsets since the Reagan administration in the ’80s, has finally received some slick new phones that are much more in keeping with Obama’s 21st century aesthetic. These new phones — customized versions of the the Airborne Executive Phone (AEP) — are provided by military contractor L-3 Communications, and they probably cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars each. In what must surely be some of the best news the President has received in the last couple of years, while the old system consisted of two different phones — one for secure communications, the other for non-secure — each AEP is capable of making calls in either mode from a single handset.
Pyrrhic victory: Intel forces its way into mobile, but might destroy itself in the process July 21, 2014 at 12:17 pm
Intel is determined to shove itself into the mobile market, but it may be doing so in a way that destroys its own chance of ever earning a profit.
Seagate starts shipping 8TB hard drives, with 10TB and HAMR on the horizon July 21, 2014 at 11:17 am
Seagate, after hinting in May that it would release 8TB and 10TB hard drives in the next 12 months, has started delivering early samples of its 8TB hard drive to “major customers” (i.e. enterprise customers). Curiously, while Western Digital hit 6TB last year by filling its drives with helium, Seagate appears to be pushing the 3.5-inch spinning disk storage envelope by simply increasing areal density. Western Digital, incidentally, despite being the first to 6TB, hasn’t announced anything new since November 2013. Maybe helium wasn’t quite ready for prime time?