Electronics
California’s new solar power plant is actually a death ray that’s incinerating birds mid-flight August 20, 2014 at 9:35 am
What spans 1,600 hectares, cost $2.2 billion to build, and fries up to 28,000 birds per year? The new BrightSource solar power plant in California’s Mojave Dessert. The plant, which uses some 350,000 garage-door-sized mirrors to focus sunlight on three boiler towers, also acts as a death ray, instantly igniting and killing any wildlife that happen to fly through the intense beam of light. Wildlife officials are concerned that this concentrated solar power plant, and others like it, could turn into “mega-trap” that decimates the ecosystem — first attracting insects, and then attracting birds that eat insects.
Giant fish cannon shoots 40 salmon per minute, is actually saving the environment August 15, 2014 at 4:01 pm
Looking more like an amusement park ride than a new environmental technology, Whooshh’s “fish cannon” can safely propel spawning fish over otherwise impassable barriers like large dams.
Tesla swings by DEF CON in search of car hackers to secure the Model S August 15, 2014 at 2:22 pm
Tesla’s connected cars are tempting targets for hackers, but the company is looking to hire its own army of bug hunters to fix problems before they present themselves.
Smart tattoo generates electricity from sweat, could power future wearable computers August 15, 2014 at 12:41 pm
Joseph Wang, a researchers from UCSD, has now come up with a way to generate power for these devices without using any external equipment. The secret is to harness electrons from lactate acid secreted in sweat.
Software on your smartphone can speed up lithium-ion battery charging by up to 6x August 14, 2014 at 11:01 am
A startup in California, with the rather odd name of Qnovo, says it has developed a new way of rapidly recharging conventional lithium-ion batteries. With Qnovo’s technology, you can get six hours of phone life from just 15 minutes of charging — compared to just 1-2 hours from conventional charging. The secret, according to Qnovo, is that no two batteries are identical — and knowing exactly how much power you can pump into the battery without damaging it can significantly improve recharge times.
By 2025, ‘sexbots will be commonplace’ – which is just fine, as we’ll all be unemployed and bored thanks to robots stealing our jobs August 14, 2014 at 9:04 am
According to a new report that looks at how continuing improvements to artificial intelligence and robotics will impact society, ‘robotic sex partners will become commonplace’ by 2025. A large portion of the report also focuses on how AI and robotics will impact both blue- and white-collar workers, with about 50% of the polled experts stating that robots will displace more human jobs than they create by 2025.
Reversible USB Type-C connector finalized: Devices, cables, and adapters coming soon August 12, 2014 at 12:25 pm
The USB Promoter Group has announced that the greatest invention in the known universe — the reversible Type-C USB connector — is finally ready for mass production. The USB Implementers Forum will now take the Type-C spec and start building devices, cables, and adapters that support the new reversible connector. We could begin seeing Type-C USB devices over the next few months, but it may take a little while for Type-C to reach critical mass.
By 2020, you could have an exascale speed-of-light optical computer on your desk August 8, 2014 at 1:29 pm
Optalysys, a UK technology company, says it’s on-target to demonstrate a novel optical computer, which performs calculations at the speed of light, in January 2015. If all goes to plan, Optalysys says its tech — which is really unlike anything you’ve ever heard of before — can put an exascale supercomputer on your desk by 2020.
Harvard & MIT create first self-assembling robots – the first real Transformers August 8, 2014 at 11:00 am
Harvard and MIT engineers, showing reckless disregard for the robocalypse, have created origami robots that can self-assemble themselves — from a flat piece of paper and polystyrene — and walk away in just four minutes. “Getting a robot to assemble itself autonomously and actually perform a function has been a milestone we’ve been chasing for many years,” says Harvard’s Robert Wood, barely stifling a maniacal cackle.
IBM cracks open a new era of computing with brain-like chip: 4096 cores, 1 million neurons, 5.4 billion transistors August 7, 2014 at 2:00 pm
Scientists at IBM Research have created by far the most advanced neuromorphic (brain-like) computer chip to date. The chip, called TrueNorth, consists of 1 million programmable neurons 256 million programmable synapses spread out across 4096 individual neurosynaptic cores. Yes, IBM is now a big step closer to building a brain on a chip.
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