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Electronics

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  TrackingPoint rifle lets you hit what you can’t see June 30, 2014 at 4:11 pm

  TrackingPoint is making the science-fiction dream of having a gun that shoots around corners a reality. Sounds great for the battlefield, but they’re also selling it to anyone with $10,000.
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  Google turns on the world’s first modular smartphone, reveals more juicy details about Project Ara June 27, 2014 at 8:38 am

  At I/O 2014, Google has publicly turned on its modular Project Ara smartphone for the first time. Considering Project Ara nothing more than some pretty concept art back in October 2013, it’s impressive how quickly Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group has produced a working prototype. If all goes to plan, Google hopes to sell the modular Ara smartphone in 2015, starting at $50 for a bare-bones endoskeleton that you plug other modules into. During the ATAP tech session at I/O 2014, Ara chief Paul Eremenko also gave us lots of technical details about how to actually build a modular phone — no mean feat, as you can probably imagine.
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  Hyundai’s 2015 Genesis will automatically brake for speed cameras: Awesome, or a terrifying misuse of technology? June 26, 2014 at 1:31 pm

  Rejoice, speeding drivers! The new 2015 Hyundai Genesis, which goes on sale around the world this year, will soon have the ability to automatically brake for speed cameras. The car will have a built-in map of speed cameras and average speed cameras, and then use a combination of GPS and its fancy Automatic Emergency Braking technology to brake if you’re still going over the speed limit when you reach the camera. While this feature is probably legal, it does appear to go against the spirit of speed cameras; after all, if you can just keep your foot down, and rely on the car to automatically brake for speed cameras, that’s hardly very safe, right?
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  US Supreme Court rules against Aereo, eviscerates the company’s business model June 25, 2014 at 2:26 pm

  The Supreme Court has ruled that Aereo’s antenna rebroadcasting service is illegal in its current form. This almost certainly means the death of the company — but it also points to the need to reconsider copyright in the US.
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  Self-contained solar PowerCube generates electricity, purifies water, and throws WiFi anywhere on Earth June 25, 2014 at 1:57 pm

  A new self-contained solar grid could pack into a single shipping container and provide energy anywhere on Earth — but can it compete with conventional diesel?
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  How to watch hacking, and cyberwarfare between the USA and China, in real time June 25, 2014 at 8:54 am

  You’ve probably read dozens of paragraphs on how the next great theater of war will be online rather than offline, and how China and the US are already battling each other for cyber supremacy. The truth is, though, unless you’ve actually been hacked, it’s hard to appreciate just how real the prospect of cyberwar actually is. Now, though, a security company has produced a fascinating geographic map that shows you hacking attempts in real-time — and sure enough, you really can see China waging cyberwar against the US.
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  Inside Ford’s virtual reality prototyping lab: Why make full-size clay cars when VR will do? June 25, 2014 at 6:59 am

  3D vizualization software cuts costly physical mockups, clay models. Yesterday’s design changes show up in today’s 3D model.
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  Supercomputer stagnation: New list of the world’s fastest computers casts shadow over exascale by 2020 June 24, 2014 at 3:06 pm

  Yesterday, Top 500 released the updated list of the world’s fastest supercomputers, and it revealed a rather worrying trend: Supercomputer performance is slowing down, rather than speeding up. When most of the world’s computing superpowers have announced their intentions to create exascale (1000 petaflops) supercomputers by 2020, this would appear to be a bit of a problem.
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  Welcome to 1984? Google acquires Dropcam, Nest opens up to third parties (updated) June 24, 2014 at 12:49 pm

  Google is moving quickly to establish a foothold in your home: After acquiring Nest Labs, it’s now acquiring Dropcam — a startup that makes cloud-based security cameras for your home — for $555 million in cash. The question now, of course, is whether people will be comfortable giving Google a potential pervasive peephole into their homes, rather than a small, innocuous startup taking a gander.
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  iFind: World’s first battery-free Bluetooth location tag raises $500,000, despite all the hallmarks of being a giant scam June 24, 2014 at 10:59 am

  In what is best described as a slow-motion bank robbery, it appears that a Kickstarter scam is about to walk away with over $500,000. The iFind, developed by WeTag, purports to be a battery-free Bluetooth tracking tag. WeTag says it has developed some magical, patent-pending technology that allows the iFind to harvest enough power from the air to operate the Bluetooth beacon forever, without a backup battery. Sadly, a bit like the Solar Roadways project, iFind sounds too good to be true, and 10,000 unfortunate backers are probably about to be conned out of $500,000.