cartechboy writes "If you've ever been in a serious car accident, you've probably had a CT scan to give doctors a clearer idea of your injuries. Soon, your car might get a CT scan, too. Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute have developed a giant new CT scanner (dubbed, yes, XXL CT) that can scan very large objects, like cars. It Turns out a CT scan of a post-crash vehicle offers an unprecedented precision look at the internal damage details, without disturbing the wreckage further. A crashed car is hoisted onto a turntable, and as it turns, two X-ray detectors on either side scan it. Then multiple images are merged into a single, three-dimensional CT scan. The scanner also can handle airplane wings and shipping containers, which means there may be possible anti-terrorism uses in the future."

Via El Reg comes news that Carl Icahn has, after a brief battle with Michael Dell for control over the company, thrown in the towel. From the article: "Icahn said in an open letter to shareholders that he still thought that Big Mike's $13.88 per share offer for the firm undervalued it, but had decided that it would be 'almost impossible' to win the battle at the shareholder vote on Thursday. 'I realize that some stockholders will be disappointed that we do not fight on,' he wrote. 'However, over the last decade, mainly through "activism," we have enhanced stockholder value in many companies by billions of dollars. We did not accomplish this by waging battles that we thought we would lose.'"

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Apple has released a new update for iOS that prevents the jailbreak evasi0n released last month. But that hacking tool has already become the most popular jailbreak ever: It's been used to remove the software restrictions on 18.2 million devices in the 43 days between its release and the patch, according to data from Cydia, the app store for jailbroken devices. In its announcement of the update, Apple says it has fixed six bugs and was polite enough to credit the hackers behind evasi0n with finding four of them. At least one of the bugs used by evasi0n remains unpatched, according to David Wang, one of evasi0n's creators. And Wang says that he and his fellow hackers still have bugs in reserve for a new jailbreak, although they plan to keep them secret until the next major release."

SheeEttin writes "Back in November 2008, Phoronix reported that Linux libraries appeared in the Left 4 Dead demo, and then in March, Valve announced that Steam and the Source engine were coming to Mac OS X. Now, Phoronix reports that launcher scripts included with the (closed beta) Mac version of Steam include explicit support for launching a Linux version."

hint3 writes "Fabrice Bellard has calculated Pi to about 2.7 trillion decimal digits, besting the previous record by over 120 billion digits. While the improvement may seem small, it is an outstanding achievement because only a single desktop PC, costing less than $3,000, was used — instead of a multi-million dollar supercomputer as in the previous records."

The war of words between the old and the new media is heating up some more. Eric Schmidt has an op-ed in Rupert Murdoch's WSJ (ironic, that) explaining to newspapers how Google wants to, and is trying to, help them. Kara Swisher's BoomTown column translates and deconstructs Schmidt's argument, hilariously. A few days back, the Washington Post's Michael Gerson became the latest journo to bemoan the death of journalism at the hands of the Internet; and investigative blogger Radley Balko quickly called B.S. on Gerson's claim that (all?) bloggers simply steal from (all?) hard-working, honest, ethical print journalists.

A post on Pixel Poppers looks at the psychological underpinnings of the types of challenges offered by different game genres, and the effect those challenges have on determining which players find the games entertaining. Quoting: "To progress in an action game, the player has to improve, which is by no means guaranteed — but to progress in an RPG, the characters have to improve, which is inevitable. ... It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform — to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master — to improve their skill or knowledge. Say you take a person with a performance orientation ('Paul') and a person with a mastery orientation ('Matt'). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. Paul will complete it quickly and smile proudly at how well he performed. Matt will complete it quickly and be satisfied that he has mastered the skill involved. Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there's still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle."

feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."