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Power

Submission + - Rice creates graphene/nanotube hybrid that could redefine energy storage (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "What could possibly be cooler than graphene or carbon nanotubes? Rice University’s new material that consists of forests of carbon nanotubes grown on sheets of graphene, of course! This graphene/nanotube hybrid is as awesome as it sounds, too; we’re talking about a material that might be the single best electrode interface possible, potentially revolutionizing both energy storage (batteries, supercapacitors) and electronics. This new material basically consists of a sheet of graphene, with carbon nanotubes up to a length of 120 microns (0.12mm) growing off it, which is really rather impressive at this scale. If we scaled it up to actual trees, they would rise into outer space. Most importantly, though, is that the bonds between the graphene and nanotubes are completely seamless — as far as electrons are concerned, there is absolutely no resistance when transitioning between graphene and nanotube. Why is this important? Because this hybrid material has a ridiculously vast surface area: A single gram of the new material has a surface area of 2,000 square meters (21,500 sq ft) — half an acre of the most conductive material in the world. When it comes to energy storage, there is a direct correlation between energy density and the surface area of the electrodes — this new graphene/nanotube hybrid could result in significantly smaller batteries, or larger batteries that can do more work. In testing, Rice University created a supercapacitor with the new material that matches “the best carbon-based supercapacitors that have ever been made,” which is impressive because “we’re not really a supercapacitor lab, and still we were able to match the performance because of the quality of the electrode.”"
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Blue: Microsoft's plan to release a new version of Windows every year (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Way back in August, three months before the release of Windows 8, we learnt about the existence of a project at Microsoft codenamed Blue. At the time it wasn’t clear whether this was Windows 9, or some kind of interim update/service pack for Windows 8. Now, if unnamed sources are to be believed, Windows Blue is both of those things: a major update to Windows 8, and also the beginning of a major shift that will result in a major release of Windows every 12 months — just like Apple’s OS X. According to these insiders, Blue will roll out mid-2013, and will be very cheap — or possibly even free, to ensure that “Windows Blue the next OS that everyone installs.” Exact details are still rather vague, but at the very least Blue will make “UI changes” to Windows 8. The sources also indicate that the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 SDKs will be merged or standardized, to further simplify the development of cross-platform apps. Perhaps more important, though, is the shift to a 12-month release cadence. Historically, Microsoft has released a major version of Windows every few years, with the intervening periods populated with stability — and security-oriented service packs. Now it seems that Microsoft wants to move to an OS X-like system, where new and exciting features will be added on an annual basis. In turn, Microsoft will drop the price of these releases — probably to around $25, just like OS X."
Network

Submission + - Caltech and UVic set 339Gbps internet speed record (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Engineers at Caltech and the University of Victoria in Canada have smashed their own internet speed records, achieving a memory-to-memory transfer rate of 339 gigabits per second (5.3GB/s), 187Gbps (2.9GB/s) over a single duplex 100-gigabit connection, and a max disk-to-disk transfer speed of 96Gbps (1.5GB/s). At a sustained rate of 339Gbps, such a network could transfer four million gigabytes (4PB) of data per day — or around 200,000 Blu-ray movie rips. These speed records are all very impressive, but what’s the point? Put simply, the scientific world deals with vasts amount of data — and that data needs to be moved around the world quickly. The most obvious example of this is CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; in the past year, the high-speed academic networks connecting CERN to the outside world have transferred more than 100 petabytes of data. It is because of these networks that we can discover new particles, such as the Higgs boson. In essence, Caltech and the University of Victoria have taken it upon themselves to ride the bleeding edge of high-speed networks so that science can continue to prosper."
NASA

Submission + - Curiosity celebrates the first anniversary of its mission to find life on Mars (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Yesterday morning marked the one-year anniversary of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. One year ago, an Atlas V 541 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral with the largest, most expensive interplanetary payload ever constructed by humankind: Mars rover Curiosity. Tasked with the mission of finding out whether Mars has ever supported extraterrestrial life, the MSL mission has so far been an unparalleled success — and hopefully, in the skilled hands of NASA engineers, Curiosity will continue to return valuable scientific data for years to come. In recent news, Curiosity took its first sniff of Martian atmosphere using its SAM instrument and found no sign of methane, probably ruling out the existence of alien life on Mars. In the last few days, Curiosity has finally moved away from the Rocknest site and is now situated at Point Lake, where NASA hopes to try out Curiosity’s last remaining untested tool: a drill that can bore into rocks. Then, if all goes to plan, Curiosity will spend a few weeks/months at Glenelg, and then roll on towards Mount Sharp — the primary target of NASA's MSL mission."
Intel

Submission + - Leaked Intel roadmap shows the end of socketed CPUs (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "For the past thirty years, desktop system longevity has been defined in sockets. I cut my teeth as an enthusiast on Socket 7, and I’ve owned examples of virtually every AMD and Intel socket standard that followed. For the past eight years, Intel has used an LGA (land grid array) socket in which the actual contacts are on the motherboard with contact points on the CPU. This packaging has served the company well; it’s scaled the number of contacts from 775 to 2011 on Sandy Bridge-E, and had no trouble with high TDP parts. According to a leaked roadmap, Haswell will be the last Intel chip slated for an LGA package. All of the Broadwell parts on the map are dual- and quad-core SoCs with 47-57W TDPs that would be soldered to the motherboard, using BGA (ball grid array, the usual method for soldering surface-mount chips to PCBs). Dual-core Broadwells also pick up the 10W and 15W form factors; the same article suggests Intel intends to abolish the 35W TDP segment altogether. Is Intel doing this to simply ramp up chipset sales, by forcing users to upgrade the whole motherboard rather than just the CPU? Unlikely, given the tiny number of users who still upgrade CPUs, rather than merely upgrading their entire system. More likely the move away from LGA to BGA is to reduce electrical resistance, thus reducing the TDP of the parts and pushing newer chips into lower power envelopes."
Piracy

Submission + - Microsoft accidentally gifts pirates with a free Windows 8 Pro license key (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "In an amusing twist that undoubtedly spells the end of some hapless manager’s career, Microsoft has accidentally gifted pirates with a free, fully-functioning Windows 8 license key. As you have probably surmised, this isn’t intentional — Microsoft hasn’t suddenly decided to give pirates an early Christmas present (though the $40 upgrade deal from Windows 8 Release Preview is something of a pirate amnesty). In fact, it’s probably just a case of poor testing and a rushed release by Microsoft. The bug involves the Key Management Service, which is part of Microsoft's Volume Licensing system. Pirates have already hacked the KMS to activate Windows 8 for 180 days — but this is just a partial activation. Now it turns out that the free Media Center Pack license keys that Microsoft is giving out until January 31 2013 can be used on a KMS-activated copy of Windows 8 to turn it into a fully licensed copy of Windows 8 Pro. The massive irony, of course, is that Microsoft originally intended to strip Media Center from Windows 8 Pro — and then, in the face of consumer backlash, decided to offer it as a free upgrade until January 31 2013. Presumably, instead of taking the time to deliver the upgrade properly, Microsoft pushed it out the door as quickly as possible — and this is the result."
Software

Submission + - Google Glass could be the virtual dieting pill of the future (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "In a year or two, augmented reality (AR) headsets such as Google Glass may double up as a virtual dieting pill. New research from the University of Tokyo shows that a very simple AR trick can reduce the amount that you eat by 10% — and yes, the same trick, used in the inverse, can be used to increase food consumption by 15%, too. The AR trick is very simple: By donning the glasses, the University of Tokyo’s special software “seamlessly” scales up the size of your food. You pick up an Oreo cookie, and then the software automatically scales it up to 1.5 times its natural size. Using a deformation algorithm, the person’s hand is manipulated so that the giant Oreo appears (somewhat) natural. In testing, this simple trick was enough to reduce the amount of food eaten by 10%. The inverse is also true: shrinking the Oreo down to two-thirds its natural size increased food consumption by 15%. This new research dovetails neatly with an area of nutritional science that has received a lot of attention in the United States of Obesity recently: That the size of the serving/plate/cup/receptacle directly affects your intake. The fact is, there’s a lot more to dieting than simply reducing your calorific intake and exercising regularly. Your state of mind as you sit down to eat, and your perception of what you’re eating, are just as important — which is exciting news, because both of those factors can be hacked."
NASA

Submission + - The downside of warp drives: Annihilating whole star systems when you arrive (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "The dream of faster-than-light travel has been on the mind of humanity for generations. Until recently, though, it was restricted to the realm of pure science fiction. Theoretical mechanisms for warp drives have been posited by science, some of which actually jive quite nicely with what we know of physics. Of course, that doesn't mean they’re actually going to work, though. NASA researchers recently revisited the Alcubierre warp drive and concluded that its power requirements were not as impossible as once thought. However, a new analysis from the University of Sydney claims that using a warp drive of this design comes with a drawback. Specifically, it could cause cataclysmic explosions at your destination."
Network

Submission + - New WiFi protocol boosts congested wireless network throughput by 700% (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Engineers at NC State University (NCSU) have discovered a way of boosting the throughput of busy WiFi networks by up to 700%. Perhaps most importantly, the breakthrough is purely software-based, meaning it could be rolled out to existing WiFi networks relatively easily — instantly improving the throughput and latency of the network. As wireless networking becomes ever more prevalent, you may have noticed that your home network is much faster than the WiFi network at the airport or a busy conference center. The primary reason for this is that a WiFi access point, along with every device connected to it, operates on the same wireless channel. This single-channel problem is also compounded by the fact that it isn't just one-way; the access point also needs to send data back to every connected device. To solve this problem, NC State University has devised a scheme called WiFox. In essence, WiFox is some software that runs on a WiFi access point (i.e. it’s part of the firmware) and keeps track of the congestion level. If WiFox detects a backlog of data due to congestion, it kicks in and enables high-priority mode. In this mode, the access point gains complete control of the wireless network channel, allowing it to clear its backlog of data. Then, with the backlog clear, the network returns to normal. We don’t have the exact details of the WiFox scheme/protocol (it’s being presented at the ACM CoNEXT conference in December), but apparently it increased the throughput of a 45-device WiFi network by 700%, and reduced latency by 30-40%."
Data Storage

Submission + - Everspin launches non-volatile MRAM that's 500 times faster than NAND (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Alternative memory standards have been kicking around for decades as researchers have struggled to find the hypothetical holy grail — a non-volatile, low-latency, low-cost product that could scale from hard drives to conventional RAM. NAND flash has become the high-speed, non-volatile darling of the storage industry, but if you follow the evolution of the standard, you’ll know that NAND is far from perfect. The total number of read/write cycles and data duration if the drive isn’t kept powered are both significant problems as process shrinks continue scaling downward. Thus far, this holy grail remains elusive, but a practical MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory) solution took a step towards fruition this week. Everspin has announced that it’s shipping the first 64Mb ST-MRAM in a DDR3-compatible module. These modules transfer data at DDR3-1600 clock rates, but access latencies are much lower than flash RAM, promising an overall 500x performance increase over conventional NAND."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Duke University creates perfect, centimeter-scale invisibility cloak (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Scientists at Duke University have created the first invisibility cloak that perfectly hides centimeter-scale objects. While invisibility cloaks have been created before, they have all reflected some of the incident light, ruining the illusion. In this case, the incident light is perfectly channeled around the object, creating perfect invisibility. There are some caveats, of course. You didn’t really think you’d soon be sneaking away with Ron or Hermione (delete as applicable) into the woods, did you? For now, the Duke invisibility cloak only works with microwave radiation — and perhaps more importantly, the cloak is unidirectional (it only provides invisibility from one very specific direction). The big news here, though, is that it is even possible to create an invisibility cloak of any description. It is now just a matter of time before visible-light, omnidirectional invisibility cloaks are created."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft demos English-to-Chinese translator that keeps your voice and accent (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "At an event in China, Microsoft Research chief Rick Rashid has demonstrated a real-time English-to-Mandarin speech-to-speech translation engine. Not only is the translation very accurate, but the software also preserves the user’s accent and intonation. We’re not just talking about a digitized, robotic translator here — this is firmly within the realms of Doctor Who or Star Trek universal translation. There is, of course, a lot of technological wizardry occurring behind the scenes. For a start, the software needs to be trained — both with a few hours of native, spoken Chinese, and an hour of Rick Rashid’s spoken English. From this, the software essentially breaks your speech down into the smallest components (phonemes), and then mushes them together with the Chinese equivalent, creating a big map of English to Mandarin sounds. Then, during the actual on-stage presentation, the software converts his speech into text, his text into Mandarin text, and then the Rashid/Chinese mash-up created during the training process is used to turn that text into spoken words. The end result definitely has a strong hint of digitized, robotic Microsoft Sam, but it’s surprising just how much of Rashid’s accent, timbre, and intonation is preserved."
Power

Submission + - Quantum entangled batteries could be the perfect power source (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Two European theoretical physicists have shown that it may be possible to build a near-perfect, entangled quantum battery. In the future, such quantum batteries might power the tiniest of devices — or provide power storage that is much more efficient than state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery packs. In a quantum system, some quantum states have energy that can be extracted, reducing the system to a passive, neutral energy state. Robert Alicki of the University of Gdansk in Poland, and Mark Fannes of the University of Leuven in Belgium, theorize that it should be possible to build a quantum battery that is full of energy-rich quantum states — and then, somehow, recharge it when you run out of juice. Better yet, the physicists also theorize that quantum entanglement could be used to create an even more efficient quantum battery. In essence, Alicki and Fannes say that you can link together any number of quantum batteries, allowing you to extract all of the stored energy in one big gulp. Their research paper goes on to say that with enough entanglement, these batteries would be perfect — with no energy lost/wasted during charge or discharge."
Security

Submission + - Why e-voting sounds cool, but will never replace paper ballots (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "It’s election day in the United States. As I write this, thousands of Americans are lining up at polling stations around the country to decide the outcome of numerous political races — and, of course, whether Barrack Obama will remain the 44th president of the United States of America, or if Mitt Romney will supplant him to become the 45th. In the majority of cases, your vote will be cast by secret ballot — stepping into a booth and marking a piece of paper, or pushing a button on a machine — but many will also vote by absentee ballot. Absentee voting in the US ranges from paper ballots mailed in by voters, all the way through to email voting for overseas citizens and military. This year, New Jersey has opened up email voting to those who have been displaced by Hurricane Sandy. This has led many to ask a rather interesting question: Why not just allow everyone to vote via email? Heck, let’s go one better: Why can’t Americans vote via the internet? The United States, with an average turnout of 48%, has one of the worst voter turnouts in the world. The general consensus is that e-voting (internet voting, email voting, SMS voting, telephone voting) would lower the barrier to entry, thus increasing turnout. Suddenly, all of those people without a car, on holiday, or too busy at work, would be able to cast their vote. Viva la democracy, right? Wrong. For political, democratic, and security reasons, e-voting will almost certainly never take off in the US."

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