Extreme Tech- Electronics

Featured

Our terrifying reliance on GPS, and the need to develop a ground-based alternative Nov 7

Most Popular

ExtremeTech’s 2014 holiday gift guide: High tech futuristic gift ideas for geeks and nerdsNov 26

What's New

Raspberry Pi, the original $25 PC, now smaller than a credit card and costs just $20 Nov 10

Electronics

• 

  A taste of the future: Double amputee controls two bionic arms at the same timeDecember 19, 2014 at 1:39 pm

  A Johns Hopkins and DARPA-funded limb has been adapted to give a double amputee control over two bionic arms at once.
• 

  Elon Musk’s speed-of-sound Hyperloop is actually being built December 19, 2014 at 9:02 am

  Way back in the summer of 2013, SpaceX’s Elon Musk proposed a new transportation system that was equal parts awesome and insane: The Hyperloop. Unfortunately, that was the extent of Musk’s involvement: He gave us his plans in the form of a 57-page white paper, and then told the world to go ahead and build it. Now, a group of 100-odd engineers have banded together to try and actually create a Hyperloop — and they seem to be making pretty solid progress.
• 

  New brain implant tech from Blackrock is making ‘mind over matter’ a reality December 18, 2014 at 1:20 pm

  Prosthetics researchers from the University of Pittsburg have now been able to finesse an additional three degrees of freedom out of an improved implant-to-arm pipeline by swapping by additional finger motions where previously Jan had only a crude pincer grip. 
• 

  The Apple iPod antitrust lawsuit: Did Apple play fair with its FairPlay DRM? December 17, 2014 at 11:30 am

  The long running class action lawsuit, which just concluded in Apple’s favor, alleged that Apple acted as an illegal monopolist, artificially keeping iPod prices high by limiting its interoperability with content purchased from other music stores. Is there any basis to these claims, or were Apple’s moves simply a case of good, solid business sense?
• 

  LG readies 55-inch 8K TV, and new quantum dot 4K display technology December 16, 2014 at 10:55 am

  At CES 2015 — now less than a month away! — LG says it will show off a 55-inch 8K TV, and a 4K TV that uses quantum dots to improve image quality and color saturation. The 8K display is also notable because it’s small — with a diagonal of 55 inches, this thing not only has an incredibly high resolution for a TV (160 PPI), but it will actually fit in most households, unlike the 85- and 98-inch 8K TVs that we’ve seen previously.
• 

  HP reveals more details about The Machine: Linux++ OS coming 2015, prototype in 2016December 16, 2014 at 9:00 am

  Back in June, HP announced that it would be plowing almost all of its R&D efforts into a brand new type of computer called The Machine. At the time, HP provided very few details — but now we have a rough timeline for the first working prototype of The Machine (2016), and news that the operating system for The Machine, called Linux++, will be released as early as June 2015.
• 

  Jaguar concept car has transparent pillars, windshield HUD with Mario Kart-like ‘ghost’ modeDecember 15, 2014 at 1:41 pm

  Jaguar Land Rover, the British automotive company that is most famous for its Jaguar and Range Rover cars, has unveiled a concept car with an incredibly elaborate heads-up windshield display, combined with “transparent” pillars that provide full 360-degree vision and remove any blind spots. Mario Kart fans in particular will like the advanced HUD: To help with navigation, it has a ‘ghost car’ mode, which projects an image of a small semi-transparent car onto the windshield, showing you where to go.
• 

  Google, spotting a gap in the VR market, pushes Cardboard on the Play Store December 12, 2014 at 2:01 pm

  Remember that neat little cardboard contraption that turns your Android smartphone into a pair of do-it-yourself virtual reality goggles? Well, it seems that Google isn’t content to let that cheeky little idea die. Instead, the folks at Mountain View are doubling down on this adorable low-cost VR solution, and dedicating an entire section of the Play Store to Google Cardboard.
• 

  Bad news, future: Computer brains are easily tricked by optical illusions, too December 12, 2014 at 12:49 pm

  For some reason, we often think of computers as infallible — subjective, logical, rational, and nearly always right. There is something about a computer’s lack of emotion and intelligence that makes them strangely trustworthy — while, on the other hand, despite their massive intelligence, we all know that humans are deeply flawed and prone to all sorts of biases. As it turns out, computers are deeply flawed as well: Optical illusions can work on computers, too.
• 

  Ford Sync 3 simplifies the interface (again), ditches Microsoft for Blackberry’s QNX OSDecember 12, 2014 at 7:17 am

  Less clutter, bigger fonts, simpler backgrounds should make Sync 3 easier. The upgrade path for 10 million existing Sync users: a new Ford.

OLDER STORIE