nukem996 writes "AMD has just announced that they will be supporting Coreboot (previously LinuxBIOS) on all upcoming processors." That means a flexible Free software BIOS replacement with a nice list of benefits.

liqs8143 writes "Peugeot EX1, the all-electric concept car, now holds the electric car lap record at Germany's Nürburgring circuit. The car was unveiled at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, and has already broken half a dozen speed records up till now. Despite wet weather, the EX1 broke the existing record with a time of 9 minutes, 1.338 seconds, beating the previous record set by a modified MINI E electric car by almost 50 seconds. The 340 horsepower EX1 averaged an impressive 85.9 miles per hour during the lap."

greenerd writes "Engineering students at Rice University have solved a huge health concern in developing countries by creating a device that uses the sun to sterilize medical instruments. This invention could help prevent the spread of infection and illness in clinics around the world without access to proper sterilization tools."

dvdkhlng writes "The Ben NanoNote open-source hand-held computer has often been criticized for not being very extensible hardware-wise. A community effort now starts to challenge this by shipping the so-called UBB board, which plugs into the micro-SD port, making 6 I/O lines available to hardware hackers. The most impressive use so far is this VGA port implemented by just a few resistors, with signal-generation mostly controlled by software. The guy who did this calls it an 'unexpected capability.' Schematics and source code are available under the GPL."

blair1q writes "Today on the White House Blog, the President (ok, his staff) released an infographic showing various facts about transportation energy, and how current gas prices need not be so worrisome. Highlights include rapidly increasing domestic production and rapidly decreasing prices for electric-car batteries, requesting Congress to shift tax breaks from oil producers to wind/solar/geothermal energy producers, and increasing domestic oil production (yes, there's a conflict there)."

An anonymous reader writes "Until today, GPGPU computing was a userspace privilege because of NVIDIA's closed-source policy and AMD's semi-open state. KGPU is a workaround to enable Linux kernel functionality written in CUDA. Instead of figuring out GPU specs via reverse-engineering, it simply uses a userspace helper to do CUDA-related work for kernelspace requesters. A demo in its current source repository is a modified eCryptfs, which is an encrypted filesystem used by Ubuntu and other distributions. With the accelerated performance of a GPU AES cipher in the Linux kernel, eCryptfs can get a 3x uncached read speedup and near 4x write speedup on an Intel X25-M 80G SSD. However, both the GPU cipher-based eCryptfs and the CPU cipher-based one are changed to use ECB cipher mode for parallelism. A CTR, counter mode, cipher may be much more secure, although the real vanilla eCryptfs uses CBC mode. Anyway, GPU vendors should think about opening their drivers and computing libraries, or at least providing a mechanism to make it easy to do GPU computing inside an OS kernel, given the fact that GPUs are so widely deployed and the potential future of heterogeneous operating systems."

KPexEA writes with this excerpt from geek.com: "[Game developer David] Braben has developed a tiny USB stick PC that has an HDMI port on one end and a USB port on the other. You plug it into an HDMI socket and then connect a keyboard via the USB port, giving you a fully functioning machine running a version of Linux. The cost? $25. The hardware being offered is no slouch either. It uses a 700MHz ARM11 processor coupled with 128MB of RAM and runs OpenGL ES 2.0, allowing for decent graphics performance with 1080p output confirmed. ... We can expect it to run a range of Linux distributions, but it looks like Ubuntu may be the distro it ships with. That means it will handle web browsing, run office applications, and give the user a fully functional computer to play with as soon as it's plugged in. All that and it can be carried in your pocket or on a key chain."

Hugh Pickens writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Hewlett Packard's HP-12C financial calculator has remained outwardly unchanged since its introduction in 1981. 'Once you learned it on the 12C, there was no need to change,' says David Carter, chief investment officer of New York wealth-management firm Lenox Advisors, who has owned his 12C for 22 years and still keeps it on his desk. 'It's not like the math was changing.' The 12C, which costs $70 on HP's website, is HP's best-selling calculator of all time, though the company won't reveal how many units it has sold over the years. The 12C still uses an unconventional mathematical notation called 'Reverse Polish Notation,' which eschews parentheses and equal signs in an effort to run long calculations more efficiently."

fergus07 writes "Scientists at Stanford have developed a battery that uses nanotechnology to create electricity from the difference in salt content between fresh water and sea water. The researchers hope to use the technology to create power plants where fresh-water rivers flow into the ocean. The new 'mixing entropy' battery alternately immerses its electrodes in river water and sea water to produce the electrical power."

An anonymous reader writes "Gitbrew has proudly released otherOS++ Linux Dual Boot v1.0b1, enabling PS3 users to install an alternative OS to their console with full access to all system hardware, including all 8 CELL cores (making the PS3 the world's most affordable supercomputer). For more information check out the installation instructions and source code."

MarkWhittington writes "Harrison Schmitt, Apollo Moonwalker, geologist, and former United States Senator, recently presented a plan to solve the world's long term energy problems by developing fusion power fueled with helium-3 mined from the Moon. He presented this plan in a speech at Williston Basin Petroleum Conference."

MojoKid writes "Although much of the buzz lately has revolved around AMD's upcoming Llano and Bulldozer-based APUs, AMD isn't done pushing the envelope with their existing processor designs. Over the last few months AMD has continued to ramp up frequencies on their current bread-and-butter Phenom II processor line-up to the point where they're now flirting with the 4GHz mark. The Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition marks the release of AMD's highest clocked processor yet. The new quad-core Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition's default clock on all four of its cores is 3.7GHz. Like previous Deneb-based Phenom II processors, the X4 980 BE sports a total of 512K of L1 cache with 2MB of L2 cache, and 6MB of shared L3 cache. Performance-wise, for under $200, the processor holds up pretty well versus others in its class and it's an easy upgrade for AM2+ and AM3 socket systems."

lee1 writes "Intel has found a way to keep on the Moore's Law track by making smaller, faster and lower-power computer chips by building 3D transistors. They are already manufacturing microprocessors using this new design, called a FINFET (for fin field-effect transistor), which incorporates a small pillar, or fin, of silicon that sticks up above the surface of the chip. Intel said that it expected to be able to make chips that run as much as 37 percent faster in low-voltage applications and use as much as 50 percent less power. Products based on the new technology may appear some time later this year."

sciencehabit writes "Computer simulations of tiny robots with rudimentary nervous systems show that, over hundreds of generations, these virtual machines evolve altruistic behaviors. They begin to share small disks — a stand-in for food — with each other so that their comrades' traits are passed on to the next generation. Experts say the study sheds light on why various animals — from bees to humans — help each other out, even when it hurts their own chances to reproduce."

fergus07 writes "Medigus has developed what it claims is the world's smallest video camera at just 0.039-inches (0.99 mm) in diameter. The Israeli company's second-gen model (a 0.047-inch diameter camera was unveiled in 2009) has a dedicated 0.66x0.66 mm CMOS sensor that captures images at 45K resolution and no, it's not destined for use in tiny mobile phones or covert surveillance devices; instead the camera is designed for medical endoscopic procedures in hard-to-reach regions of the human anatomy."

An anonymous reader writes "With the release of the dual-GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990, closely followed by the competing Nvidia GeForce GTX 590, we saw graphics card performance reach new heights. With bandwidth throughput in excess of 300GB/s, these cards can consume more power than entire computer systems. By utilizing three monitors, games can become roughly 3x more demanding, as the graphics card is required to render an overwhelmingly higher number of pixels. Whereas graphics card reviews and benchmarks usually test GPUs at single monitor resolutions, TechSpot has added two more LCD monitors and tested eleven games running at resolutions of 5040x1050, 5760x1200 and 7680x1600."

sproketboy noted that many years ago Michael J. Mahon built the AppleCrate — a parallel stack of Apple IIs — for no good reason. Recently he came back with the AppleCrate II, which more than doubles the number of motherboards, and at least triples the awesomeness.

If you think the idea of french kissing someone over the internet with a robotic tongue is kind of gross, go outside and enjoy your afternoon. For those of you still sitting here, The University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo has just what you've been looking for. The Kiss Transmission Device is a motion-sensing receptacle that records your tongue's movements and then sends that information to a corresponding machine in your partner's mouth. From the article: "In addition to real-time smooching, the Kiss Transmission Device can be programmed to 'remember' specific rotations. The pre-recorded information can then be accessed by multiple recipients. According to the inventor, this could be a good way for celebrities to get closer to their fans." The University gave no word on the possibility of tentacles in future models.

1sockchuck writes "Solar power hasn't been widely used in data centers because it takes a very large installation of photovoltaic solar panels to generate the levels of energy required by these facilities. But the month of April has seen the debut of four new data centers featuring on-site solar arrays."

swamp boy writes "How do you file paper documents at home? I'm mostly asking about things like monthly paper-based statements that get mailed to you (credit cards, gas cards, medical bills, health insurance explanation of benefits, electricity bill, natural gas bill, water bill, etc.). Do you push to have as many sent electronically as possible? Do you scan the paper documents to store electronically and then shred the paper document? How do you manage and organize the ones stored electronically? I've been doing this the old-fashioned way with manila file folders, but as time goes by I keep thinking that I should opt for digital storage. What works for you?"