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Submission + - This Is How Formula 1 Brakes Work

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: For the most part, you probably have a simple understanding of how your car's brakes work. But a race car, that's a whole different beast. Brembo's the biggest name in the brake industry, and it just released a video explaining the technology that goes into the brakes on a Formula 1 race car from pedal to caliper. Obviously it starts with every component being beefed up from a normal braking system, but there's also aluminum monoblock calipers, carbon rotors and pads, a brake-by-wire system with a redundancy in case of an electronic failure, and a kinetic energy recovery system (KERS). Of course, KERS is the most interesting bit as the it allows for smaller rear calipers than before which of course reduces mass. Believe it or not, all of this stuff ends up trickling down to mass-market cars eventually, it's just a matter of time. So the next time you tap your brakes, remember, that technology was likely proven on a race car at some point.

Submission + - Chinese gov't reveals Microsoft's secret list of Android-killer patents (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: A list of hundreds of patents that Microsoft believes entitle it to royalties over Android phones, and perhaps smartphones in general, has been published on a Chinese language website.

The patents Microsoft plans to wield against Android describe a range of technologies. They include lots of technologies developed at Microsoft, as well as patents that Microsoft acquired by participating in the Rockstar Consortium, which spent $4.5 billion on patents that were auctioned off after the Nortel bankruptcy.

Submission + - Crowd-control drones reveal the technology's dark side

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: The Skunk, built by Desert Wolf, is designed to "control unruly crowds without endangering the lives of security staff," and is reportedly already being adopted by South African mine owners. Equipped with a 4,000-strong clip and four paintball gun barrels, the Skunk can fire up to 80 projectiles in a single second. It can carry dye markers, pepper spray bullets or even solid plastic balls, which somewhat stretches the definition of "non lethal." The hardware also carries strobe lights and on-board speakers to disorientate and warn the crowd, as well as a FLIR thermal camera for night vision operations.

Submission + - Google Launches 64-bit Version Of Chrome For Windows

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google today announced the debut of a 64-bit version of Chrome for Windows, starting with the introduction of 64-bit Dev and Canary channels for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users. You can download both now from their respective pages: Dev and Canary. It's worth noting that in both cases the 64-bit version is offered by default if you are running a 64-bit flavor of Windows, though the 32-bit version is still available. This would suggest Google eventually plans to serve up the 64-bit version of Chrome as the default version for 64-bit Windows users.

Submission + - FPGA for Makers: The Dream of Drag and Drop Circuits (kickstarter.com) 12

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: FPGA's are great, but learning VHDL/Verilog can be a daunting task! This new Kickstarter project has a unique new idea so simple that it just might put FPGA's into the hands of Makers everywhere. It's as simple as pairing an FPGA with an Arduino and creating software that lets Makers draw circuits. Instead of learning a new programming language Makers can draw circuits right away using open source building blocks such as stepper controllers, audio chips, video chips, and even a bitcoin miner. Circuits are loaded to the FPGA and then controlled by the Arduino. It's a very simple arrangement with mind boggling possibilities — everything from bitcoin mining, embedded vision, robotics, to reconfigurable System on Chip designs.

Submission + - Anatomy Of The 1,000 MPH Bloodhound SSC

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: The laws of physics are pretty clear: speed is relative. To a snail, human walking pace is incomprehensible, yet compared to the speed at which light travels, everything in the universe is standing still. To us mere humans, 1,000 mph is pretty fast. It's even faster along the surface of the planet, which is what the Bloodhound SSC land speed record team aims to achieve next summer. Using both a jet engine and a rocket, the 1,000 mph target seems within reach. A new video has been released detailing the anatomy of the record attempt including the start and stop points which are twelve miles apart. The entire run is lined with rocks which isn't very comforting, but the Bloodhound SSC does have the world's strongest brakes, parachute, and air-brakes. Still, aiming your 1,000 mph car at a bed of rocks is still risky business. We'll find out how it all pans out next summer when the record attempt run takes place.

Submission + - War of the one cubic inch Linux computers

Submitted by jonsmirl
jonsmirl writes: The battle for smallest Linux COM may not be won yet. Recently Vocore was announced, but it is attracting competition. AsiaRF is offering a one cubic inch Linux computer with wifi and Ethernet on Indiegogo. What sets this project out is it's low risk. The module already has FCC. It is already supported in OpenWRT. And it ships next month, no need to wait.

Submission + - Pixar gives away RenderMan software for free (pixar.com)

Submitted by Rashdot
Rashdot writes: As a further commitment to the advancement of open standards and practices, Pixar is announcing that,in conjunction with the upcoming release, free non-commercial licenses of RenderMan will be made available without any functional limitations, watermarking, or time restrictions. Non-commercial RenderMan will be freely available for students, institutions, researchers, developers, and for personal use. Those interested in exploring RenderMan’s new capabilities are invited to register in advance on the RenderMan website to access a free license for download upon release.

Submission + - 'Female' Hurricanes Are Deadlier (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Hurricane names help to make public safety messages memorable, but new research shows that the choice of name may influence how people react to evacuation orders. Although the World Meteorological Organization assigns the storms alternating male and female names, historical records show that those with more feminine names had higher death tolls. Could people be avoiding evacuation because they assume that female-named storms will be gentler? Researchers tested this idea with written scenarios that described an upcoming storm and asked respondents how dangerous they expected the storm to be and whether they would follow a voluntary evacuation order. No matter which names they used—Victor/Victoria, Christopher/Christine, or selections from the upcoming hurricane name lists—respondents who read about male-named hurricanes judged them as riskier and said they would be more likely to evacuate than people who read about hurricanes with female names.

Submission + - Strange New World Discovered: The 'Mega Earth' (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Meet “mega-Earth” a souped-up, all-solid planet that, according to theory, should not exist. First spotted by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, the planet is about 2.3 times larger than Earth. Computer models show planets that big would be more like Neptune or the other gas planets of the outer solar system since they would have the gravitational heft to collect vast amounts of hydrogen and helium from their primordial cradles. But follow-up observations of the planet, designated as Kepler-10c, show it has 17 times as much mass as Earth, meaning it must be filled with rock and other materials much heavier than hydrogen and helium. “Kepler-10c is a big problem for the theory,” astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, told Discovery News. “It’s nice that we have a solid piece of evidence and measurements for it because that gives motivations to the theorists to improve the theory,” he said.

Submission + - Red Dwarfs Could Sterilize Alien Worlds of Life (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Red dwarf stars — the most common stars in the galaxy — bathe planets in their habitable zones with potentially deadly stellar winds, a finding that could have significant impacts on the prevalence of life beyond Earth, new research shows. About 70 percent of stars are red dwarfs, or M-type stars, which are cooler and smaller than the sun. Any red dwarf planets suitable for liquid water, therefore, would have to orbit much closer to their parent star than Earth circles the sun. That presents a problem for life — at least life as we know it on Earth, says physicist Ofer Cohen, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Cohen and colleagues used a computer model based on data from the sun’s solar wind — a continuous stream of charged particles that permeates and defines the solar system –- to estimate the space environment around red dwarf stars. “We find that the conditions are very extreme. If you move planets very close to the star, the force of this flow is very, very strong. Essentially it can strip the atmosphere of the planet unless the planet has a strong magnetic field or a thick atmosphere to start with,” Cohen told Discovery News.

Submission + - Private Group Re-establishes Contact With ISEE-3 Comet Probe (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: A 35-year old space probe has come back to life after a 16-year slumber thanks to the world's largest single-aperture radio telescope. Using the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico, the ISEE-3 Reboot Project has re-established contact with the mothballed ISEE-3 space probe. The private organization took control of the unmanned ex-NASA spacecraft and is commanding it to execute functions as part of an assessment of its health before returning it to exploration service.

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