An anonymous reader writes "Intel has updated its processor price list earlier today. Common sense suggests that Intel may not care that much anymore whether its customers know what they are actually buying. One new six-core processor slides in between six-core and quad-core processors – and its sequence number offers no clues about cores, clock speed, and manufacturing process. If we remember the gigahertz race just a decade ago, it is truly stunning to see how the CPU landscape has changed. Today, processors carry sequence numbers that are largely meaningless."

Deep Thought writes "Texas Instruments, already infamous thanks to the signing key controversy last year, is trying a new trick to lock down its graphing calculators, this time directed toward its newest TI-Nspire line. The TI-Nspires were already the most controlled of TI's various calculator models, and no third-party development of any kind (except for its very limited form of TI-BASIC) was allowed until the release of the independent tool Ndless. Since its release, TI has been determined to prevent the large calculator programming community from using it. Its latest released operating system for the Nspire family (version 2.1) now prevents the calculators from downgrading to OS 1.1, needed to run Ndless. This is TI's second major attack on Ndless, as the company has already demanded that websites posting the required OS 1.1 remove it from public download [PDF, in French], obviously to prevent use of the tool. Once again, TI is preventing calculator hobbyists from running their own software on calculators they bought and paid for."

Gamp writes with this interesting snippet: "As microprocessors have shrunk, the wiring between them hasn't always kept up. But engineers at the University of Illinois are changing that with a decades-old metalworking technique. It's called electrodeposition. It's basically the same process used in electroplating, but instead of depositing metal on a surface, as when trying to make a gold-plated piece of jewelry, the metal is deposited in a wire. 'People weren't thinking about how to fabricate a wire in three dimensional space,' said Min-Feng Yu, a professor of mechanical science and engineering."

radicalpi writes "Motorola has responded to claims that eFuse is designed to brick your device if you attempt to mod it or install unauthorized bootloaders. Yes, the device will still not operate with unauthorized software, but it will only go into recovery mode until you reinstall the authorized software. According to Motorola: 'If a device attempts to boot with unapproved software, it will go into recovery mode, and can re-boot once approved software is re-installed.'"

ElectricSteve writes "When Robert Irving was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, it was the catalyst for him and his childhood friend, Richard Little, to turn their engineering skills to the task of developing an exoskeleton that was a practical, standing-and-walking alternative to wheelchairs. The result is REX, an exoskeleton made of strong, lightweight materials that is designed to support and hold a person comfortably as he moves. Users strap themselves in to the robotic legs with a number of Velcro and buckled straps that fit around the legs, along with a belt around the waist. While most robotic exoskeletons we've looked at, such as the HAL, augment human motion, this is generally not an option for wheelchair-bound users, so REX is controlled using a joystick that sits at the wearer's waist level." The rig is expected to cost $150K when introduced later this year in New Zealand. Gizmag has an obnoxious timed popover subscription nag, so NoScript is indicated.

DARPA is working on a project that will convert energy from the human body to power a variety of military gadgets. From the article: "Obviously, our bodies generate heat — thermal energy. They also produce vibrations when we move — kinetic energy. Both forms of energy can be converted into electricity. Anantha Chandrakasan, an MIT electrical engineering professor, who is working on the problem with a former student named Yogesh Ramadass, says the challenge is to harvest adequate amounts of power from the body and then efficiently direct it to the device that needs it." If I remember the movie correctly, this didn't turn out so well for the humans.

jonniee writes "3M has rolled out a 22-inch digital display capable of 20-finger multi-touch input with less than 6 millisecond response time. The monitor incorporates 3M's Projected Capacitive Technology based on mutual capacitance operation theory. The result produces a silky smooth response that has almost no lag in execution."

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "Here are Photos/Pictures of my iPhone DSLR Prototype 1.0. This is my first attempt at putting together an iPhone DSLR. You might ask 'Why pair an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, or iPhone 4 with a DSLR lens?' Why not!" Prototype or not, it's a cool project.

Esther Schindler writes "After several years of trying, graphics processing units (GPUs) are beginning to win over the major server vendors. Dell and IBM are the first tier-one server vendors to adopt GPUs as server processors for high-performance computing (HPC). Here's a high level view of the hardware change and what it might mean to your data center. (Hint: faster servers.) The article also addresses what it takes to write software for GPUs: 'Adopting GPU computing is not a drop-in task. You can't just add a few boards and let the processors do the rest, as when you add more CPUs. Some programming work has to be done, and it's not something that can be accomplished with a few libraries and lines of code.'"

An anonymous reader writes with some discouraging news for hack-oriented purchasers of the new Droid X phone: "If the eFuse fails to verify [the firmware information (what we call ROMS), the kernel information, and the bootloader version], then the eFuse receives a command to 'blow the fuse' or 'trip the fuse.' This results in the booting process becoming corrupted, followed by a permanent bricking of the phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with."

adeelarshad82 writes "At TED Global in Oxford, Microsoft released a video showing off its 'virtual human' technology, named Milo, designed for the company's hands-free Xbox 360 motion controller called Kinect. Milo is built to react to people's emotions, body movements, and voice, allowing players to interact with the virtual character. It was built using artificial intelligence developed by Lionhead studios, along with undisclosed technology from Microsoft. According to games designer Peter Molyneux, the game exploits psychological techniques to make a person feel that Milo is real. Each Milo character will be unique because every player's interaction with the virtual character will sculpt the type of virtual person Milo will evolve to become."

J. Dzhugashvili writes "If you read Slashdot, odds are you already know about WiGig and the 7Gbps wireless networking it promises. The people at Atheros and Wilocity are now working on an interesting application for the spec: wireless PCI Express. In a nutshell, wPCIe enables a PCI Express switch with local and remote components linked by a 60GHz connection. The first applications, which will start sampling next year, will let you connect your laptop to a base station with all kinds of storage controllers, networking controllers, and yes, an external graphics processor. wPCIe works transparently to the operating system, which only sees additional devices connected over PCI Express. And as icing on the cake, wPCie controllers will let you connect to standard Wi-Fi networks, too."

ptorrone writes "A group of open source hardware makers have put together a draft of the open source hardware definition, now at version 0.3, which hopes to further define the making, sharing and selling of hardware within an 'Open Source Hardware license.' This fall, the day before Maker Faire New York City, the group hopes to have the license finalized for v1.0, and they are holding the first Open Source Hardware Summit. There are currently dozens of companies making open source hardware, altogether worth millions of dollars."

shmG writes "As the US moves to reduce dependence on oil, the nuclear industry is looking to expand, with new designs making their way through the regulatory process. No less than three new configurations for nuclear power are being considered for licensing by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The first of them could be generating power in Georgia by 2016."

miller60 writes "A small but growing number of data centers are generating renewable energy at their facility, despite challenges with cost and scalability. In a special report, Data Center Knowledge looks at data centers implementing on-site solar power, wind energy, geothermal cooling and recycling waste heat from their hot aisles. Even as some projects choose to go green, other data center operators insist that improved power efficiency offers a far better return and carbon impact than pursuing on-site renewables."

countertrolling sends in a clip from Wired that begins "...researchers at MIT have found a method to let users click and scroll exactly the same way they would with a computer mouse, without the device actually being there. Cup your palm, move it around on a table and a cursor on the screen hovers. Tap on the table like you would click a real mouse, and the computer responds. It's one step beyond cordless. It's an invisible mouse. The project, called 'Mouseless,' uses an infrared laser beam and camera to track the movements of the palm and fingers and translate them into computer commands... A working prototype of the Mouseless system costs approximately $20 to build, says Pranav Mistry, who is leading the project."

coondoggie writes "NASA today significantly expanded its Centennial Challenges program to include $5 million worth of new competitions to develop robots, small satellites, and solar powered spacecraft. One of the new competitions is the Sample Return Robot Challenge. Its purpose is to demonstrate a robot that can locate and retrieve geologic samples from wide and varied terrain without human control. This challenge has a prize purse of $1.5 million. The objectives are to encourage innovations in automatic navigation and robotic manipulator technologies."

shikaisi writes "Not content with just killing people in computer games, South Korea has gone one better and is deploying remotely controlled sentry robots on the border with the north. According to the article 'If the command centre operator cannot identify possible intruders through the robot's audio or video communications system, the operator can order it to fire its gun or 40mm automatic grenade launcher.'"

thecarchik writes "Last week's heat wave prompted another eruption of that perennial question: Won't electric cars that recharge from grid power overload the nation's electricity system? The short answer is no. A comprehensive and wide-ranging two-volume study from 2007, Environmental Assessment of Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles, looked at the impact of plug-in vehicles on the US electrical grid. It also analyzed the 'wells-to-wheels' carbon emissions of plug-ins versus gasoline cars. The load of one plug-in recharging (about 2 kilowatts) is roughly the same as that of four or five plasma television sets. Plasma TVs hardly brought worries about grid crashes."

theodp writes "If you're a math, CS, or engineering grad, odds are you've seen your share of robot-like teaching — but never an actual robot teacher. Now, that's starting to change. Computer scientists are developing robots with social components that can engage people and teach them simple skills, including household tasks, vocabulary, elementary imitation and taking turns. Several countries have been testing teaching machines in classrooms. At USC, researchers have had their robot, Bandit, interact with autistic children. South Korea is 'hiring' hundreds of robots as teacher aides and classroom playmates and is experimenting with robots that would teach English."