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Power

Submission + - Earth Day Geekery: Best Eco-Tech of 2007 (So Far)

kitzilla writes: "Hybrid/Organic LED lighting. Hyper-efficient solar cells. Practical wave power. So far, 2007 has been a barnburner year for environmental technology. Here's an interesting list of some of more practical, market-bound examples. Looks like companies realize "green" is also the color of money."
Hardware Hacking

Is Your GPS Naive? 291

mi writes "Many GPS devices today will try to scan the FM bands for traffic advisories in the area to display on their screens. The signals, however, are neither authenticated nor encrypted, and one can — with commonly available electronics — construct a device to broadcast bogus advisories. Possible codes range from "bullfight ahead" to "terrorist attack"..."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Wi-fi and Health Issues

tauslu writes: ""It's on every high street and in every coffee shop and school. But experts have serious concerns about the effects of electronic smog from wireless networks linking our laptops and mobiles, reports Geoffrey Lean""
Encryption

Submission + - Oldest math problem (prime numbers) solved

Kibbles5757 writes: "Independent scientist James McCanney has solved the prime number problem using a rigorous 7-part mathematical proof. The proof includes six of the main properties of prime numbers: symmetry, reciprocity, closure (using the operation of addition) and the infinite wavelike nature of prime numbers. Seven pieces of the puzzle had to be put together in an intricate, interwoven pattern. These provided the solution to directly calculate the prime numbers. McCanney claims that only the most sophisticated mathematicians will be able to pick up the rigorous proof and understand it on first reading. He says there is an overall pattern to the prime numbers and that the prime numbers are not random. They are in fact extremely orderly; one just has to find that order, an order that is "locked in the numbers".

http://www.calculateprimes.com/"
Announcements

Submission + - YEurope: YCombinator Clone launches in Austria

An anonymous reader writes: YCombinator clone YEurope, a venture firm investing in extremely early-stage european ICT-Startups has just opened their call for applications. From July to September the founders of up to 8 startups will have the chance to come to Vienna and work on their startups. They'll be accepting and fund teams of 1-3 people working on technology startups.
Music

Submission + - Music formats and the future

dheera writes: "In digitizing my CD albums to my computer for personal use on portable devices, I'm debating whether I should encode them to MP3 or Ogg format. While I support patent-free formats and have a feeling that Ogg sounds better at a given bitrate, I fear that in the long-run, Vorbis will be forgotten, especially now that very few hardware players natively support it, and that my entire collection will have to be re-digitized to MP3 or some other format too soon. What do you recommend — will Ogg Vorbis continue to hold up and will it continue to be an accessible format for, say, the next 10 years?"

Feed Nano-nose sniffs out sickness (pheedo.com)

A panel of nanoparticles is being trained to detect the 'scent' of illness by detecting particular combinations of proteins in body fluids

Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Apple patent posits live desktop, ala Win XP

Webster Phreaky writes: The future Mac OS X desktop may be a feast of moving images with little or no impact on system performance, a recent Apple patent filing suggests. http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS Trouble is that Windows 2000 and XP has had "Active Desktop" with Internet content and video capabilities SINCE Windows 2000!! Good ol Apple, reinvention is the life of Apple iNOvation.
Communications

gTalk To Get Video Boost? 89

lotusleaf writes "According to an article at PCWorld, "Google Inc. has bought video conferencing software from Marratech AB", "The client software runs on Windows 2000 or XP, Mac OS X 10.4, or versions of Linux". Could this provide a cross-platform video conferencing boost to gTalk?"
Privacy

Submission + - Personal data exposed! Can legislation fix it?

rabblerouzer writes: "Millions have had their personal information stolen because of lax security and may not even know it because of the patchwork of state laws that fail to mandate timely notification of victims. Boston-based law firm Mintz Levin is seeking feedback on what you would like to see included in draft legislation. You have a stake in this; speak up."

Feed Dell Tablet PC coming this Fall? (engadget.com)

Filed under: Tablet PCs

We've been hearing rumors about a possible Dell Tablet PC pretty much since the day the first Tablet PCs went on sale, is it finally going to happen now? None of this is officially confirmed or anything, but jkOnTheRun (which has tons of cred when it comes to this stuff) reports that Dell is probably going to roll out a Tablet PC sometime around September or October of this year and that it will most likely be a convertible-style Tablet based on the Latitude D420 and come with a widescreen display and optional WWAN.

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!


Programming

Journal Journal: "Use a non-broken toolchain"

OK, Here goes for another rant. When my GCC throws an error, and I mention it to the devs, it is immediately my 'toolchain's fault'. OK, maybe my tool chain has been compiled by someone different than the original devs... but I am pretty sure that the Debian devs do not spend their time manually tinkering with the tool chain so as to break it. An error in compiling is an error in compiling. No difference whether its Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, Familiar, DSL, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Haiku or whateve
Linux

The Completely Fair Scheduler 292

hichetu writes "Kernel trap has a nice summary of what is going on behind the scenes to change the Linux Scheduler. The O(1) Linux scheduler is going to be changed so that it is fair to interactive tasks. You will be surprised to know that O(1) is really too good not to have any side-effects on fairness to all tasks."
Power

Submission + - Sun converts carbon dioxide into fuel

Roland Piquepaille writes: "We all know that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a major impact on the Earth climate. But now, chemists at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) have developed "a device that can capture energy from the sun, convert it to electrical energy and split carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen." As carbon monoxide can easily be converted to liquid fuel, this prototype device kills two birds with one stone: it helps saving fuel while reducing the concentration of a greenhouse gas. Still, this device needs some improvements before an industrial deployment. Read more for additional references and a picture of the prototype device."
Security

Submission + - Porn site hacked as an act of Jihad?

LoLo writes: "On Easter Sunday, the media servers of a fairly popular porn site (yet another YouTube clone) were compromised. After gaining FTP access the intruder(s) deleted over 7500 videos. All that was left on each box was a new index.html page entitled STOP PORNO with the text "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful" and a Muslim Prayer Call video embedded in the body. Whether this porn site hack was actually the work of Muslim extremists or a pasty white kid from Philly is debatable. Considering the rash of such attacks over the Mohammed cartoons out of Denmark last year, I think it may have been the real deal."

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