Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of mirror-image Internet data transfers, Motorola’s prototype physical augmentations, and a whole bunch of Xbox One heehawing.

This week in Xbox One: Scandals, rumours, unverifiable sources, and a whole lot of hyperbole

Xbox One will be region locked, “Similar to the movie and music industry, games must meet country-specific regulatory guidelines before they are cleared for sale,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We will continue to work with our partners to follow these guidelines with Xbox One.” It is unclear whether or not the PS4 will be region locked.

The Federal Data Protection Commissioner in Germany Peter Schaar has publically stated that he personally considers the Xbox One a “monitoring device,” which “continuously records all sorts of personal information…[including] reaction rates, my learning or emotional states. They are then processed on an external server, and possible even passed on to third parties. Whether they will ever be deleted, the person can not influence.” While it is hoped that this is merely a hyperbolic overreaction, there is currently very little factual information available. (Translation provided by Google Translate)

Microsoft have added 30,000 servers to Xbox Live, which will be used to improve graphical and gameplay performance for Xbox One titles. GPU- and CPU-heavy tasks that aren’t bound by latency (such as cloth or water rendering) can be sent off to the server farm, pre-calculated, and then applied to the scene by the console. According to GM of Redmond Game Studios and Platforms at Microsoft, Matt Booty, the Xbox One server cloud will provide three virtual devices for “every Xbox One available in your living room.” Developers will need to manage how their titles make use of this remote grunt. This means that games may look better when the console is online, though Booty notes that if the Internet drops out mid-session, “the game is going to have to intelligently handle that.”

TweakTown has posted a specs comparison between the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and just for kicks, the Xbox 360. It seems that the PS4 has the lead when it comes to pure theoretical performance, but if the mere fact of the current console generation’s continued performance—eight years after its inception—is anything to go by, what really matters is the dedication to each platform shown by the developers. The Xbox 360 is far less capable than the PS3 on paper, and yet still performs admirably despite its aged and inferior interior.

Microsoft may well get a little more than a taste of pre-owned Xbox One game sales. According to a report over at MCV, retailers that wish to sell pre-owned Xbox One games will need to agree to certain terms and conditions, and hand over almost the entire trade-in price to Microsoft. Unconfirmed reports from ConsoleDeals.co.uk claim that retailers will get to keep less than 10% of the trade-in price, which is apparently £35. It should be noted that since this report was published, Microsoft’s Major Nelson has officially, albeit unsatisfyingly responded, “The ability to trade in and resell games is important to gamers and to Xbox. Xbox One is designed to support the trade in and resale of games. Reports about our policies for trade in and resale are inaccurate and incomplete. We will disclose more information in the near future.”

Microsoft have filed for a patent to use Kinect 2 to enable ‘visual DRM’, or “content distribution regulation by viewing user.” After reports from unverified “industry sources,” Microsoft have officially responded, “Microsoft regularly applies for and receives patents as part of its business practice; not all patents applied for or received will be incorporated into a Microsoft product.”

Speaking of patents, Microsoft have also filed for a patent covering the ability to mete out sweet, sweet achievements and Gamerscore points for watching television.

(Thanks Stefan!)

Motorola show off prototype physical augmentations at D11

Motorola have developed two “wearable” technologies which may stretch the definition of the term, somewhat. The closest product to the definition is a prototype electronic tattoo which includes “an antenna and a couple of circuits,” that the Google-owned electronics manufacturer hopes to use as a proximity-based authenticator. Former DARPA head, and now SVP for advanced technology and projects at Motorola, Regina Dugan, was sporting the tattoo on her arm during her presentation at the D11 conference. The second, and slightly crazier prototype is a pill that includes a chip which, when swallowed, is powered by your stomach acid and transmits an 18-bit signal, effectively turning your entire person into an “authentication token.” Dugan called the technology “vitamin authentication.” According to Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, the pill has been approved by the FDA.

Noise-cancelling the Internet could be the key to higher speeds and greater reliability

Noise-cancelling headphones work by using a microphone to capture external low-frequency sound waves, such as the low rumble of a plane’s engines, and playing those sound waves exactly as they’re heard through the headphones. The trick is in inverting the noise to its phase conjugate, putting the sound waves 180 degrees out of phase with the intruding waves, thus effectively cancelling out the noise altogether. Researchers have discovered that a similar method could be used to reduce noise in fibre optic communications, thus increasing the speed of those transmissions, and making them more reliable. Lead researcher Xiang Liu and his associates found that sending original data along with its phase conjugate made filtering out noise a simple matter, without having to add expensive and complicated monitoring systems to the existing Internet infrastructure. The team was able to reliably send data at 400Gbps over a distance of 12,800 kilometres. The reduction in errors increases bandwidth by reducing the need to resent failed packets.

Google rolling out new Gmail Inbox, introduces tabs

Before tabbed browsing was a thing, the Internet was a much darker place. Whether you were a casual or advanced user, the introduction of tabs to our web browsing experience changed it for the better. Well, now Google hope to do the same thing to Gmail with the new Gmail Inbox. The new Gmail Inbox utilises five tabs which essentially ‘pre-sort’ your email into their respective categories: Primary, Social, Promotions, and Updates. Users can drag and drop messages into tabs to move them around, and manually set specific senders to always appear in a certain tab. Starred messages from any tab will also appear in the Primary tab. Users can choose which of the tabs they wish to use with their inbox, or opt to turn them all off and continue unabated. The new paradigm is set to gradually roll out to desktop, Gmail for Android 4.0+, and Gmail for iPhone and iPad in the coming weeks, as is Google’s wont for the release of new features.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of the wholesale price of the GTX 780, 3D printed food, and bomb-loving bees.

GeForce GTX 780 early US pricing revealed

TechPowerUp is reporting that US distributor SYNNEX is offering Nvidia’s upcoming GeForce GTX 780 to retailers for US$644.44. After margins are applied by retailers, TPU estimate that the card could be priced anywhere between US$650-700. Once we apply the Australia Tax, it would be safe to guess that the price could end up being more like $750-800 for Australian consumers. The screenshot of the distributor’s site included in the report confirms specifications: CUDA core count of 2,304, 3GB of memory, GPU Boost 2.0 technology, and a very similar design to the GTX TITAN.

Could 3D printed food end world hunger at the cost of world taste?

Last week we saw burgers grown in labs, this week we have 3D printed food. Mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor’s vision is to see every kitchen equipped with a 3D printer, with which the people of the Earth construct for themselves fully customised and nutritionally-appropriate meals, layer by layer. Contractor’s system is based on the RepRap 3D printer, and uses a series of cartridges filled with powders and oils to build meals that are perfectly appropriate to the consumer’s dietary requirements, whether they be elderly, pregnant, sick, or incredibly fit. The powders act as the basic building blocks of food, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, Omega 3, and Calcium, building blocks that we traditionally consume by finding palatable meats and vegetables that contain them.

As the system delivers these building blocks in powder form, palatability is less of a concern, meaning that they could be harvested from algae, grass, seeds, and even insects. The powders have a shelf life of 30 years, which means that Contractor’s system would eliminate food waste if universally used, thanks to the fact that each cartridge would be returned to the store only once it was completely spent. NASA has provided Contractor’s company with a $125,000 grant to build a prototype.

Green screens required to bring Arrested Development cast together for season 4

Netflix announced in January that it would be bringing season 4 of Arrested Development to the service in May 2013. Given the years since season 3, the extremely busy cast has moved on to other projects, and is subsequently very difficult to assemble. To remedy this for the production of Season 4, creator Mitch Hurwitz said in an interview with Rolling Stone that episodes were shot out of order, and that “half of the stuff is on green screen.” For example, a particular conversation between Michael (Jason Bateman) and Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) was filmed separately over the course of four months, with each actor filming their portion of the conversation in front of a green screen. The entire ensemble was able to come together for a single two-day shoot, however. Here’s hoping that the production difficulties necessary to bring together one of television’s most hilariously dysfunctional families only adds to their performance.

The ‘paperless scanner’ makes scanning feel like the future

The combination of two cameras, a small projector, and some clever software is all it has taken for Japan’s technology giant, Fujitsu, to create a digital scanner which allows the user to take snapshots of physical media with little more than the touch of a finger. The user is able to draw a bounding box with their finger around the desired image or block of text on the page, and the device captures it and makes it available for digital manipulation. While this doesn’t differ wildly from the capabilities of a more traditional scanner, the interface is undeniably future-y, with its fanciful projected scanning line, and digital reproduced content flying off the page.

How honeybees learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

Professor Nikola Kezic of Zagreb University in Croatia is working on a method for training the common honeybee to seek out unexploded land mines. Despite the fact that the Balkan wars are long since finished, it is estimated that as many as 90,000 land mines are still randomly dotted around 1200sqkm of Croatian territory. Since the beginning of the Balkan war in 1991, more than 2500 people have died from land mine explosions. Professor Kezic’s theory for the training of the bees is founded in their incredibly fine sense of smell. Honeybees are capable of sniffing out and identifying a wide range of odorants.

In order to harness this, Professor Kezic’s team began introducing TNT particles to captive bees’ food, in the hope that the bees would begin to associate the smell of explosives with their next meal. This was tested by setting up multiple feeding points, some of which were laced with TNT, and letting the bees choose where to feed. More often than not, the bees chose the sugar water seasoned with explosives. The next hurdle for the team to face, according to Kezic, is that while the training of a single bee is relatively simple, “training their colony of thousands becomes a problem.”

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of Windows 8.1, Nintendo’s method of monetising fan videos, and the $325,000 burger that you probably wouldn’t want to eat.

Windows 8.1 is nigh, free, and feature-filled

The previously-named “Windows Blue” update for Windows 8 has been officially dubbed Windows 8.1, and will be released for free. According to a recent Microsoft press release, a public preview of Windows 8.1 will be made available via the Windows Store on June 26, to coincide with the 2013 Build conference in San Francisco. The major difference between Windows 8.1 and past service packs is that 8.1 will include a slew of unannounced new features and visual changes, the likes of which are traditionally reserved for major revisions.

In fact, Microsoft have been careful to avoid referring to Windows 8.1 as a “service pack” at all, further shoring up the fact that Windows 8 and the latest revision of Office are signs of a Microsoft that has finally learned that their decrepit licencing model won’t last, and that something needed to change in order to keep consumers buying into their latest and greatest releases.

Nintendo will forcibly add advertisements to amateur Let’s Play videos

The concept of the Let’s Play (LP) has been around for quite a while: lengthy videos of gameplay that are narrated by the player, which give viewers some deep insights into the featured game. As time has gone on these videos have become an incredibly valuable tool for gamers, as they show a lot of detail without being caged or focused by PR. It seems that Nintendo has finally come to this realisation itself, and reacted swiftly and harshly. Automated takedowns were issued by the venerable purveyor of family-focused games, which caused popular LP’er Zack Scott to complain loudly on Facebook about the situation, saying “It jeopardizes my channel’s copyright standing and the livelihood of all LPers”.

After his post was reported by GameFront, Nintendo responded officially stating that the blocks would stop, but that ads would be added to the videos, “For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to, or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”

Google I/O 2013 heralds major new features for many Google products

Google’s annual I/O conference has rolled around again, and this year they have announced a set of new features and UI revisions for a large number of their products. As well as updated UIs for Google Plus, Google Music, and Google Play, the Mountain View crew has added All Access, a $9.99 per-month subscription service to Google Play that provides access to the entire Google Play music library in a fashion similar to Spotify and rdio; a new service called Hangouts which aims to unify all Google-based communications systems into a single platform for use on PC, and your mobile devices; “hot wording” replaces Google’s voice search, now all that is required to search with voice is to say “Hey Google…” at Chrome, and it should respond by performing a search based on what you say next.

A lot more was announced, the details of which can be found at this handy round-up at The Verge.

Eric Schmidt says ‘Don’t be evil’ was the “stupidest rule ever”

In more Google news, executive chairman Eric Schmidt has told National Public Radio that Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ rule is “the stupidest rule ever,” though the his reasoning isn’t as controversial as it sounds. More of a motto than a rule, ‘don’t be evil’ was designed to allow and remind staff to speak up when something that was potentially “evil” was being discussed at Google. According to Schmidt, the rule is stupid because the definition of evil is quite broad, “there’s no book about evil, except maybe, you know, the Bible or something.” This has apparently caused problems in the past, and he cites an example: “What happens is, I’m sitting in this meeting, and we’re having this debate about an advertising product. And one of the engineers pounds his fists on the table and says, that’s evil. And then the whole conversation stops, everyone goes into conniptions, and eventually we stopped the project. So it did work.”

It is also difficult for a large-scale business to avoid doing any evil whatsoever, as many common business practices could be easily classified as at least a ‘little bit evil’, such as dodging taxes by putting offices in countries like Bermuda to avoid millions of dollars’ worth of taxes each year. When NPR asked Schmidt whether he could “flip a switch on [his] office computer and read [our] emails,” Schmidt replied “Yes, and I would lose my job and be sued to death.” But would anyone even find out? “Someone would find out, trust me,” says Schmidt.

The $325,000 in-vitro burger

Do you like burgers? Are you worried about the impact your carnivorous tendencies are having on the world around you? Well, Dr. Mark Post of the Maastricht University in the Netherlands has come up with a method for obtaining meat that could one day have a positive impact on the world livestock industry. This might appeal to your conscience, but what about your appetite? Dr. Post’s method involves taking stem cells from the necks of cows obtained from slaughterhouses, and causing these precursor cells to transform into cells specific to muscle that is good for eating.

The process is adapted from that which tissue engineers use to grow tissue and organs for use in medical research and procedures. Reading into the procedure even a little bit was enough to turn this writer’s stomach, but if the idea of eating 20,000 strips of lab-cultured meat, grown in foetal calf serum, and packed into a US$325,000 burger patty which “tastes reasonably good” sounds good to you, go check out the New York Times explainer piece.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of the monstrous Haswell overclock, the realities of the quantum internet, and the door lock that automatically responds to your iPhone.

Intel’s upcoming Haswell processors could be scary fast

Due to launch to consumers in June, Intel’s first Haswell-based processor, the i7-4770K, has reportedly already been ravaged by an enterprising overclocker. Using a mysteriously obtained engineering sample of the chip, “rtiueuiurei” managed a staggering 7012.65 MHz, with a base clock of 91.07 MHz, multiplier of 77.0x, and horrifying 2.56V core voltage. It is worth noting that the source site ocaholic mentioned that it is possible that CPU-Z could have misreported the voltage due to “bugs related the [sic] CPU-Z’s voltage reading,” citing the fact that the same 22nm process transistors found in Ivy Bridge processors begin to fail at a voltage of 2.00 (thanks to PalZer0 for sending this in).

Somebody builds an automated Xbox Disc Changer out of Lego

This is exactly the kind of completely unnecessary and complicated contraption that Lego Mindstorms was meant to produce. YouTube user zwenkka has built an immense, slow, and rickety automated disc carousel and changer for Xbox 360, using three Lego NXT bricks, around 3000 lego parts, and a series of sensors and motors. The array is governed by the NXT bricks, simple embedded programmable computers which use the Mindstorms NXT software to send commands to actuators and retrieve readings from sensors, and is controlled via Bluetooth from an app that previously existed in the Google Play store.

Given how much time must have been spent in putting the system together and troubleshooting the precise placement of each of the system components, not to mention the ponderously slow 42 seconds each successful disc change requires, it could be difficult to glean why someone would go to so much effort to produce such an impractical contraption. The perhaps self-evident answer likely lies in the same delight we get from watching Rube Goldberg machines complete their circuit, or from seeing the last domino in a run topple: we do it because we’re the only species on the planet clever enough to be frivolous with complexity, and damn us if we’re not proud of that fact.

The Delta Six Controller: An Arduino-based, open-source gun controller

As children, light-gun games were like some sort of magic, and as such sat atop birthday and Christmas lists until parents caved and made the purchase. Since then, the dream of reducing abstraction by actually putting a gun into the player’s hand for games deeper than mere shooting galleries, has been a pipe-dream. It seems that a new Kickstarter may have the answers we seek in the Delta Six controller for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

This open-source, Arduino-based controller uses a combination of motion sensors, gyro sensors, and buttons to translate player’s actions with the device into inputs that can be used to control many modern shooters that already exist on the market, without removing the player from the experience by mapping in-game actions to arbitrary buttons on a controller or keyboard. The Delta Six allows the player to reload by hitting the bottom of the clip, aim by raising the scope to their eyeline, and even hold their breath for sniping by pressing the rifle butt into their shoulder. Imagine combining the Delta Six with an Oculus Rift and the Omni treadmill from a couple of weeks ago!

The Kickstarter pitch video goes into more detail but be warned, it doesn’t shy away from hyperbole.

Quantum internet isn’t a dream, in fact it already exists

Quantum internet may sound like science fiction, but it seems that not only is it possible, it has existed in active use for two and a half years at Los Alamos National Labs. By harnessing the laws of quantum mechanics, quantum internet purportedly allows for utterly secure network communication. In quantum mechanics the act of measuring a quantum object, a photon for instance, always changes it. Quantum internet, then, secures data packets by causing them to become corrupted by the simple act of observing them. The primary disadvantage is that normally this kind of communication occurs via a point-to-point connection over a single length of fibre, where even attempting to pass the message onto another point irrevocably changes it.

Los Alamos National Labs solved the problem by implementing a hub-and-spoke network. Technology Review goes into more detail on how the system works in practice: “Their approach is to create a quantum network based around a hub and spoke-type network. All messages get routed from any point in the network to another via this central hub… The idea is that messages to the hub rely on the usual level of quantum security. However, once at the hub, they are converted to conventional classical bits and then reconverted into quantum bits to be sent on the second leg of their journey. So as long as the hub is secure, then the network should also be secure.”

The Kwikset Kevo door lock makes your iPhone the key to your home

Security-conscious people are quite well aware of the fact that their smartphone represents a serious security risk. It holds all of their contacts, email, private messages, logged-in apps, and password lockers within its small, easily-misplaced frame. All that stands between their data and a malcontent hoping to gain access to their private information is—at best—a 4-digit pin code. Well, home security company Kwikset have produced the Kevo door lock, which adds the physical security of your home to the perhaps overlong list of responsibilities placed upon the chamfered shoulders of your iPhone 5.

With a Kevo lock installed, all that is required for entry is the simple act of approaching your door with your smartphone in your pocket. Using a combination of Bluetooth and location services, the lock senses your approach and unlocks the door without requiring physical interaction from the user. Those without iPhones are also able to use the device through the purchase of a Kevo Fob. The lock itself runs on two AA batteries, which Kwikset claim will last for around a year. Fear not, if the batteries die the lock can also be disengaged with a traditional key, like a peasant may have done back in the Stone Age.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of NVIDIA’s GTX 780, the man who took a year off from the Internet, and Virgin Galactic’s plan for relatively affordable commercial space travel.

Nvidia’s GTX 780 is probably going to be really expensive

The upcoming Nvidia GTX 780 is due for release in the US this month, and while it is iterative on the Kepler design, it includes some new features and optimisations that promise to make it a serious contender in the market.

Despite its basis in existing architecture, Swedish graphics card aficionados SweClockers have reported sources claiming that the GTX 780 may well be significantly more expensive than the opening price of the GTX 680, and could well end up being priced akin to the GTX Titan at around US$1000.

Through the Google Glass: Explorer Edition units reviewed

Google Glass Explorer Edition headsets are now in the wild, and various forms of review and hands-on impressions pieces are appearing all over the place.

The prevailing response seems to be positive, but also hopeful that future revisions will make good on the promise of this early prototype. By most accounts, the experience of actually using Glass’ refractive display is really exciting. Google have released a one-minute video that shows how the home interface works, and how basic functionality is performed via the touch panel on the right arm of the device.

Skype shedding local installations in favour of a browser-based plugin

Microsoft are trialling a browser-based Skype plugin, which allows users to make Skype calls from within an Outlook.com inbox, removing the necessity for the locally installed application. Those for whom Skype and other VoIP/video calling services were to spell an end of our reliance on phone providers, should find the release of a browser-based plugin interesting. The reason that Skype and its ilk haven’t become the first port of call for world communication is a lack of ubiquity — the mobile phone system is already incredibly well established, and integrated into most of our lives.

Skype remains something that needs to be organised in advance via “hey can I call you on Skype?” where SMSs and phone calls simply work. If Microsoft are to achieve ubiquity, they need Skype to be an easier alternative to pulling out your phone. The browser plugin is currently being rolled out in the UK, and should see release in Australia sometime between September and November 2013.

Paul Miller returns to the Internet after a year

One year ago, Paul Miller of The Verge decided that he wanted to see who he could be without the Internet. He felt that the Internet could be the reason for his procrastination habits, the restriction of his creativity, and perhaps even a significant factor of his self-confidence and depression issues.

Well, a full year later he has returned and has captured his experience in text and video. The article is really interesting, as it helps to address and deflect some of the vilification that the Internet receives. The experiment has helped Paul to come to the conclusion that the Internet is a one-stop-shop for many of our bad habits, habits that people are perfectly capable of fulfilling to the same or even a greater extent when disconnected, despite the inconvenience of not having them piped directly to our lap, pocket, or desktop.

Virgin Galactic hope to make space travel affordable to everyone

In a recent interview, Sir Richard Branson spoke with a strange mix of care and candour to Engadget’s Michael Gorman about their plans for consumer space travel, and the realities of making the practice commercially viable and more than mere dream fulfilment. Sir Richard was careful to avoid forecasting pricing for commercial flights in the future, but he is confident that the current price of US$250,000 will come down.

“[Our first thousand customers will] help us effectively fund the program. They’re the people who can afford to pay it, and we’re enormously appreciative of their support,” said Branson. “By the time you get to an age where you want to go to space, you’ll be able to afford it.”

As well as the exorbitantly priced initial 1000 flights, Virgin Galactic also plan to subsidise prices by offering a comprehensive satellite delivery service to businesses that wish to launch low-orbit satellites relatively cheaply and quickly. “We’re also going to be able to put more satellites in space in one month — three and a half thousand satellites in one month — than have been put up in the last 10 years,” Branson claimed. Virgin Galactic plan to be capable of launching low-orbit satellites within 24 hours instead of the current period of one year, which Sir Branson believes will be “transformative.”

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of reality TV on Mars, a 360 degree treadmill, and a mech for kids.

Fitness comes at a price – Virtuix Omni Treadmill: the immersive way to get fit while gaming

Many of us have a love/hate relationship with the sedentary lifestyle that gaming more often than not produces in its subscribers. A number of games and peripherals have been released to try to combat this, but they come with their own problems. Some of them just aren’t much fun, some require a level of full-body dexterity that many players find intimidating, and a lot of them try to map completely extraneous body movements to inputs that are much more suited to buttons on a mouse, keyboard, or controller. These apparent concessions to movement-based controls take us out of the game, and ultimately lead us to prefer our normal, relatively lazy control methods. Well, Virtuix, a company that specialises in omni-directional treadmills, has come up with a method that they hope will finally pair immersion with physical control inputs.

By using their Virtuix Omni treadmill in conjunction with an Oculus Rift and a hand-held weapon-like controller, they believe that players can fully immerse themselves into first-person shooters, without the need for incredibly complicated and expensive display methods. The Verge reports that the Omni treadmill uses a slick, sloped surface that the user slides down as they step rather than more traditional rollers or belts, and that the device also supports jumping. Virtuix are planning to launch a Kickstarter campaign soon, and are aiming for a price of $400-$600 USD.

Hard disk price-per-gigabyte has finally returned to pre-Thailand flood levels

After floods in 2011 caused hard disk manufacturers to slow production and increase prices in order to stay afloat (ahem), it was predicted that prices wouldn’t return to pre-flood per-gigabyte levels until 2014.

Well, a detailed report over at ExtremeTech shows that not only have hard disk prices per-gigabyte already declined and stabilised, but the same is almost true for SSD prices as well. The report also notes that the price-per-gigabyte sweet spot for SSD capacity has shifted from 64GB to the far more tenable 256GB, and that shipments of 512GB+ SSDs have almost doubled since September. We can infer from this that manufacturers are finally “adding capacity and driving up storage volume after a prolonged price decrease,” which is only good news for those looking to finally, affordably upgrade to an SSD after putting up with the sluggishness involved in using HDDs for primary storage.

The Cyclops: the pilotable mech to help your children crush their enemies

Almost a year after Suidobashi Heavy Industries announced their $1.35 million Kuratas mech, an unlikely competitor, food processing machinery manufacturer Sakakibara Kikai, has released a mobile, pilotable faux-death machine designed for kids! The Cyclops is a battery-powered mech, with two moveable arms, a steel claw, and a drill-like spinning cone, clearly designed to make make-believe mincemeat out of kindergarten nemeses.

It’s difficult to understand why a parent would want to spend $20,000 on a kid’s toy that could cause damage severe enough to warrant nasty phone calls from friends’ parents, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is the coolest thing in the world.

Also produced by Sakakibara Kikai, the LANDWALKER.

Reality television meets space travel – Mars One to send human settlers to Mars

Ever wanted to just get away? Hop a midnight train to anywhere? How does a one-way ticket to Mars strike you? Mars One is a private space project which plans to send a group of intrepid humans to live out the rest of their natural lives on the surface of Mars by the year 2023. The Mars One project was put together by Bas Lansdorp, an entrepreneur from the Netherlands, who earnestly believes that the goal of human settlement of Mars is not only possible, but is possible using technology that already exists today. It seems that at least some portion of the project is centred around reality television, which will be used to partially fund the mission. “This is not ‘Big Brother Goes to Mars.’

It’s important this is treated as a very serious project,” Lansdorp told the New York Times in March. “Mars One will enable people to watch and be involved… the stories we tell around it will make it financially possible,” he said. The tentative schedule for the project would see supplies reaching Mars in 2016, and settlers in 2023. A second group of settlers would be due to arrive in 2025.

Your money is at your fingertips: Biometric payments via fingerprint

One of the primary problems that alternative payment systems like near field scanning or Commonwealth Bank’s Kaching system, is that in order for them to become a widely accepted method of payment, they require enough of their customers to have access to phones with near field chips in them, or one of those big fat and expensive Kaching iCarte iPhone cases. Barcelona-based commerce company Paytouch have developed a system to make fast purchasing ubiquitous with their fingerprint-based biometric payment terminal.

Users simply tie their credit card details to their fingerprints via a Paytouch account, and benefits are obvious: consumers no longer need to carry around cards that can be lost or stolen, businesses encourage impulse buying by reducing the time necessary in processing transactions, and Paytouch receive a commission for each purchase made via their system. Making biometrics an option for two-factor authentication is a really great idea, as long as fingerprints are the only ID needed to use the system. At some stage, someone will find a way to defeat the system’s security. When a credit card is compromised, you cancel it and order another. Replacing fingers isn’t quite as simple a task. Paytouch plan to expand their service further throughout Europe and into the US within the next year or so.

Header image courtesy The Verge.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of the possibility of Windows 8.1 allowing users to boot straight to the desktop, Apple’s warranty assessment guidelines, and the Google Glass technical specifications.

Windows 8.1 may allow users to boot to desktop, skipping Start Screen

For many, the move to Windows 8’s Start Screen has been a major stumbling block, a dark portent signalling Microsoft’s apparently inevitable departure from desktop computing, or something. Well, it seems that all is not lost, aside from perhaps some prematurely jumped-to conclusions. MicrosoftPortal (via WinBeta translation) reportedly broke open twinui.dll in a leaked copy of Windows 8.1 and found code referencing suppression of the Start Screen.

As can be seen in the above screenshot, the ‘twinui-CanSuppressStartScreen’ attribute has been added which at least implies that the Start Screen could be bypassed in favour of the desktop. Whether or not this is true for the final release of Windows 8.1 remains to be seen.

Tech specs of Google’s tech-specs revealed

Now that the first Google Glass units have begun winging their way to developers in the Explorer program, Google have released details on the technical specifications of the product, and the ecosystem that will support it. Glass’ specs (pun intended) are quite close to those of Google’s own Galaxy Nexus, with 12GB of usable memory, Bluetooth and 802.11b/g wifi, a battery that is good for “one full day of typical use,” and a 5MP camera for stills and 720p video. It diverges from the Galaxy Nexus, however with the Bone Conduction Transducer for personal audio, which rests on the Mastoid Process behind your ear and transmits sound to the user’s inner ear by vibrating against the bone.

Some may note the absence of processor details from Google’s Glass tech specs page, which raises questions about Glass’ raw grunt. As it turns out, the point is moot. Very little is actually processed on the device; Glass is designed to be a client for external systems, be they the phone to which the headwear is paired, or external web services.

Vast amount of digital evidence available on Boston bombing is “both a challenge and an opportunity”

In a recent interview over at The Verge, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis is both grateful and daunted by the amount of digital evidence available from members of the public in the wake of the Boston marathon bombings. “We intend to go through every frame,” he says, “This is the most complex crime scene we’ve ever had to deal with.” The crime scene covers about 12 city blocks, most of which is openly accessible to the public. Special Agent Richard DesLauriers of the FBI’s Boston Division agrees, “We are processing all the digital photographic evidence we can,” and asks that “the public continue submitting whatever they have to police.” This digital evidence is then analysed by experts such as the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association (LEVA) in Indianapolis.

In the wake of the riots that occurred after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup finals to the Boston Bruins, Vancouver police received over 5,000 hours of video footage from the public. LEVA then tasked 52 analysts to process the footage, whom in 14 days identified 15,000 criminal acts perpetrated by 300 rioters.

$200 modified DVD drive used to analyse blood for disease, replaces $30,000 predecessor

Researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm have, with little more than some simple changes, turned a regular DVD drive into a $200 blood analysis machine that can complete HIV blood test analysis in just a few minutes, rather than the traditional several days required of the $30,000 specialised tool used to date. ExtremeTech details the necessary changes in their report, which boil down to a replacement light sensor capable of reading blood samples, semi-translucent discs designed to hold the samples, and software that allows the device to communicate with a computer and its operator.

The researchers responsible for the technology hope that the relatively low-cost device will one day be critical in decreasing the spread of HIV in developing countries.

Detailed descriptions of Apple’s MacBook and iPhone warranty assessment guidelines (with acronyms!)

An anonymous reader has provided Tested.com with a detailed outline of Apple’s warranty assessment guidelines for the analysis of MacBooks and iPhones sent in for replacement, including the tools and imagery they and their colleagues use to determine whether or not a fault is covered. The suite of tests employed by Apple Certified Macintosh Technicians (ACMTs) in testing MacBook products consists of four primary analyses: Dent assessment with the Dent Inspection Tool (DIT), inspection of the internal Liquid Contact Indicators (LCIs), and two sets of software diagnostics, the Apple Service Toolkit (AST), and the Apple Service Diagnostic (ASD).

The DIT is a small piece of metal with a rounded 90 degree curve, and a small spike on one side. This tool is lined up against the edges and corners of the MacBook casing to check for egregious dents or misalignment, and the spike is inserted into dents to determine their depth. LCIs are visually inspected to see whether or not they have turned pink after having had direct contact with a liquid. The AST is a simple diagnostic tool to be run in front of the customer which simply checks for the presence of each component in the system, while the ASD is the low-level detailed diagnostic tool for use during off-site assessment. For iPhones, the devices undergo the same LCI assessment, and are then compared to Apple’s Visual/Mechanical Inspection Guide, a series of photos that detail the types of damage that are and are not covered by Apple’s one year warranty.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of AMD’s belief that there will be no Direct X 12, fancy Google Street View videos, and how the next Xbox could take control of your TV.

According to AMD, there will be no DirectX 12

According to a report over at TechPowerUp, which is in turn quoting an interview posted on German site heise.de, Roy Taylor vice president of global channel sales for AMD has stated that the company does not believe that there will be a DirectX 12 API, at least as far as AMD can tell. Taylor’s assertion does hold some water, given that both AMD and Nvidia are expected to be releasing new GPU architectures by the end of 2013, and that new architectures are usually made to take advantage of new releases of DirectX. If a new version of DirectX has not been provided to the two major players in GPU development, it stands to reason that their next generation GPUs will be integrated with other technologies. It is unknown what this means for the future of Windows-based GPUs, and their ability to achieve high levels of performance thanks to the close relationship between Windows and the Microsoft-developed DirectX APIs.

Apple set to adopt “5G wireless” – 802.11ac potentially available before the end of 2013

The ever-turning rumour mill has made yet another revolution, turning coarse rumour-grain into refined rumour-flour that could make for a super tasty Truth Loaf, at least according to a report over at 9to5mac. The early adoption of 802.11ac by Apple has been rumoured for more than a year now, and has been shored up by the recent uncovering of code references to 802.11ac in the latest public release OS X. Files in the WiFi-Frameworks folder make clear references to the upcoming wireless standard, which has been scheduled for ratification in late 2013. Now, it seems that Apple’s rumoured hardware adoption of Broadcom 802.11ac chips has been backed up by software readiness. According to a Broadcom press release, 802.11ac is set to vastly improve WiFi reliability and speeds, “Broadcom’s 5G WiFi dramatically improves the wireless range in the home, allowing consumers to watch HD-quality video from more devices, in more places, simultaneously. The increased speed enables consumers to download web content from a mobile device faster and quickly synch large files, such as videos, in a fraction of the time it would take on a similar 802.11n device. Since 5G WiFi transfers the same volume of data at a much faster rate, devices enter low-power mode faster, which results in significant power consumption advantages.”

Virtually get from A to B in style with Hyperlapse

Hyper-lapse photography is a captivating form of time-lapse, which combines fixed points of interest with dynamic camera movements in order to produce surreal, exciting videos of the chosen subject. Well, design firm Teehan+Lax Labs has come up with an automated method for producing Hyperlapse videos using Google Street View imagery, without requiring the user to spend hours editing and stitching together photos. Users can input their own Google Maps routes, and the Hyperlapse system automatically produces a looping trip from point A to point B. Whether you’re using the tool to relive old well-trodden routes, or to vicariously experience a location you one day hope to visit, Hyperlapse produces some stunning results.

The next Xbox may be able to control your TV, take over from your set top box

According to a report at The Verge, “multiple sources familiar with the company’s Xbox plans” have revealed that the next Xbox will include features that will allow it to take control of a cable TV box, and overlay Xbox user interface elements. The feature passes-through a cable box signal via HDMI, and provides controls to the user via the Xbox interface. It is assumed that this will work in a similar fashion to Google TV. Given the language used in the report, it would be fairly safe to assume that these features will likely be irrelevant to Australian consumers—at least at launch—as they seem to rely heavily upon each individual cable provider. Whether or not the features will be made to conform with our Freeview specification remains to be seen, though it is worth noting that specifically Australian SKUs needed to be produced before TiVo could release products here, which has resulted in significant delays between the launch of US and AU TiVo products.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs stepping down before end of 2013

After a two year stint as CEO of Mozilla, Gary Kovacs is stepping down in favour of “something more commercial,” reports All Things D. Kovacs is credited with having brought about serious change during his time at the company, including “adding staff, opening global offices and, most of all, doubling down in mobile.” He has also been the spearhead of Mozilla’s Firefox OS, a move designed to reduce Mozilla’s reliance on desktop software, and thus their lifeline deal with Google to make their search engine the default for Firefox, one of Mozilla’s primary revenue streams. It remains unclear who will step into the role, especially given the challenges inherent in Mozilla’s for-profit and nonprofit duality. Kovacs has committed to work through the search for a new CEO, and to remain on the board of directors after stepping down from his current role. In his memo to staff, he closed with “Please keep going! We have momentum, we have a great vision and mission, and we have tremendous support from all of our partners and users for what we are doing. We cannot let up — not for one second! Stay focused, keep going, and keep rocking the free Web! The world is expecting nothing less!”

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of AMD’s response to Nvidia’s “bitter” PS4 put-downs, possible Internet sabotage attempts, the lifting of electronics use during take-off and landing, and yet another amazing discovery that could change the way we make and use electronics.

AMD calls NVIDIA “bitter” in response to recent lashing out

After NVIDIA’s recent dismissal of the PS4 and its technical specifications, AMD’s director of ISV relations Neal Robinson has flippantly responded in an interview with TechRadar. When asked about NVIDIA’s summary of the PS4 as running on “a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU”, Robinson laughed and said “”Well, of course they’re going to do that, they’re a little bitter.” He then went on to clarify, “For us, really by looking at that APU that we designed, you can’t pull out individual components off it and hold it up and say, ‘Yeah, this compares to X or Y.’ It’s that integration of the two, and especially with the amount of shared memory that Sony has chosen to put on that machine, then you’re going to be able to do so much more moving and sharing that data that you can address by both sides.”

It sounds as though the primary advantage is the APU’s ability to share data. “It’s more than just a CPU doing all these amazing calculations and a GPU doing calculations. We are now going to be able to move certain tasks between the two.” When asked about AMD’s involvement with Microsoft and the next Xbox, Robinson deftly dodged the question, but made a point of mentioning the “tremendous success” they enjoy in their partnership with Microsoft for the Xbox 360. “It was a great partnership and we enjoy working with them,” he said, clearly inviting speculation.

Undersea cables damaged in possible Internet sabotage attempt

It can be easy to forget just how tenuous our access to Internet really is. The Washington Post recently reported on allegations from Egypt’s naval forces that three scuba divers were arrested during an attempt at “cutting an undersea cable” in the Meditteranean, and that the week-long Internet slowdown experienced in Egypt since March 22 was due to cable damage caused by either a speeding fishing boat, or a ship’s anchor. This kind of cable damage causes slowdowns because Internet traffic needs to be rerouted around the damaged cable, taking the long way around. In a piece over at Wired, Alexandra Chang highlights the fragility of our international network by pointing out that “Nearly 200 undersea fiber optic cables link the world’s telecommunications, and they are for the most part poorly armored, rarely patrolled and only occasionally monitored.”

She goes on to quote Andrew Blum, author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, “Other than obscurity and a few feet of sand, [the cables] are just there,” he says. “The staff at a cable landing station might patrol the path to the beach landing once or twice a day, but otherwise I’ve never heard of or seen any constant security.”

Unreal Engine 3 ported to Firefox

Via the use of a newly updated ASM.js optimisation module for Firefox’s JavaScript engine, Mozilla claims that they are able to deliver incredible performance ability to C applications compiled to ASM.js. They believe that these applications can function in the browser at only twice as slow as natively executed code. In English, this means that it will be possible for browser applications to make better use of physical system hardware to allow for much more intensive applications to function in-browser. By way of example, Mozilla showed off this technology at their GDC session by running a web-based version of Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 via ASM.js. This differs from Google’s Native Client solution, which allows a browser to run native code within a sandbox.

Mozilla believe that the major advantage of ASM.js is that it works now. “The principal benefit of ASM.js over whole new technologies like NaCl and PNaCl is that it works today: existing JavaScript engines already optimize this style of code quite well. This means that developers can ship ASM.js today and it’ll simply get faster over time. Another important benefit is that it’s far simpler to implement, requiring very little additional machinery on top of existing JavaScript engines and no API compatibility layer.”

Electronic devices may soon be allowed to remain powered on during take-off and landing

An investigation is underway to finally decide whether or not it is okay for personal electronics to remain in use by aircraft passengers during take-off and landing. An industry group made up of representatives from Amazon, Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the CEA, FCC and elsewhere are working together on the investigation, and hope to present their findings on July 31. Tom’s Hardware’s Kevin Parrish has anecdotal evidence that seems to imply that the rules are unnecessary in their current state. Apparently, one of the pilots of his flight home from CES 2013 told him that “there’s no real reason why passengers must turn off their devices.

The only valid reason he could think of was the amount of incoming and outgoing transmissions per plane that could possibly interfere with the tower.” Parrish then quotes Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, “So it’s O.K. to have iPads in the cockpit; it’s O.K. for flight attendants —and they are not in a panic —yet it’s not O.K. for the traveling public.” The industry group hopes to find that the takeoff/landing electronics rule, as established by the Federal Aviation Administration, was put in place without real evidence.

Will graphene become the new direction for electronics, or will it go the way of carbon nanotubes?

The same University of Manchester scientists that brought you the levitating frog, Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, may be on the cusp of an incredibly important scientific discovery. They have found that an isolated single-atom-thin layer of graphite has properties that makes it a serious contender to become the next foundational technology to propel electronics into the future. With “electrical conductivity 100 times faster than silicon; strength 200 times greater than steel; [and] astounding optical and thermal characteristics,” it is easy to imagine a wide range of potentially exciting applications for graphene. It is worth remembering, however, that this isn’t the first time that such astounding technological breakthroughs have been reported, we must remember the excitement at the discovery of carbon nanotubes, and the subsequent failure to find a commercially viable use for the technology.

That said, according to Novoselov’s roadmap for graphene, the next most viable commercial outcome will be in flexible displays. He and his colleagues believe that the hurdles that stopped carbon nanotubes from making it to mass scale production simply do not exist for graphene, and that commercialisation will come.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup (delayed to Monday because I’m a terrible person –Ed)! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of Sony’s answer to Google Glass, near light speed fibre optic networking, and haunting imagery of the Fukushima nuclear exclusion zone.

Sony patent filing puts Google Class squarely in head-mounted crosshairs

It seems that Google are going to have some competition in the head-mounted display market, if a recent Sony patent filing is anything to go by. Sony’s patent is similar to Google Glass, in that it entails attaching displays to a pair of glasses, but differs in some interesting ways. Most notably, Sony’s offering includes two displays, one for each eye. It also includes earbuds mounted on adjustable arms for private audio. There are no details included on the design or features of the displays, but it does note that despite the inclusion of two screens, it will be a 2D interface. While this may look like a reaction to Glass, it is worth noting that this isn’t Sony’s first foray into head-mounted display technology. Their HMZ-T2 Personal 3D Viewer is already available for purchase, and this new patent appears to be a continuation of patents filed in 2008 and 2009. While Sony are well regarded for their hardware, it’s possible that their efforts in the HMD field may be hampered by their traditionally lackadaisical approach to software and UI design. After all, Google have a major advantage in their widely used and interconnected services, and established UI visual language.

Researchers develop fibre network that operates at 99.7% the speed of light

As Australia attempts to roll out a fibre-to-the-home network in order to bring us closer to international networking standards, researchers at the University of Southampton have developed optical fibres that could immediately make the NBN obsolete. These new fibres are capable of transferring data at 99.7% of the speed of light, with a throughput of 73.7 terabits per second, as opposed to current top-of-the-line 40 gigabit fibre optic links. This was achieved by developing hollow fibres, thus allowing light to be transmitted mostly through air. While hollow fibre strands are not a new idea, the key to this new iteration of the technology is an ultra-thin photonic-bandgap rim which keeps light travelling down each individual fibre without dissipating against the outer cable casing, and limits the interference inherent in more traditional glass-air fibre interfaces. The researchers also make use of a new technology called mode division multiplexing, which allows them to transmit three simultaneous modes of 96 channels of 256Gbps, thus using more of the fibre for transmission. While this technology is unlikely to be widely used any time soon, it could be utilised in short runs for datacentres and supercomputer interconnects to vastly improve speed and reduce latency.

Google Street View takes us on a tour of Fukushima nuclear exclusion zone

Displaced residents of Namie, Japan are finally able to see the town they left behind two years ago thanks to Google Street View. Namie mayor Tamotsu Baba requested that Google send Street View cars through the town to give residents a chance to at least virtually tour their abandoned home, and to raise awareness world-wide of the town’s plight. “Many of the displaced townspeople have asked to see the current state of their city,” says Baba, “and there are surely many people around the world who want a better sense of how the nuclear incident affected surrounding communities.” The imagery is available on Street View, and on the Memories of the Future website.

Slapfight between spam blocker and web host slows entire Internet

Anti-spam organisation Spamhaus has recently been the victim of a massive denial of service (DDoS) attack, purportedly perpetrated by Dutch “anything goes” web host Cyberbunker. Cyberbunker, known for their policy of hosting anything as long as it isn’t child pornography or terrorism-related material, was recently blacklisted by Spamhaus, and has publically responded by saying that Spamhaus should not be allowed to decided “what goes and does not go on the internet”. Since the blacklisting, Spamhaus has been actively deflecting a DDoS attack which, according to Spamhaus CEO Steve Linford, “are peaking at 300 gb/s.” He notes that “normally when there are attacks against major banks, we’re talking about 50 gb/s.” Spamhaus have alleged that Cyberbunker are behind the attacks, in conjunction with “criminal gangs” from Eastern Europe and Russia. Spamhaus has been able to dilute the attack and maintain their services thanks to utilising a heavily distributed infrastructure based in many countries across the globe, though this has caused other areas of the Internet to suffer, with Netflix reporting a substantial slowdown caused by congestion during the attacks.

Amazon patent for “remote displays” offloads processors and batteries to remote base stations

In more patent news, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is listed on a recent Amazon patent as an inventor of “remote displays”, a technology that he hopes will allow portable readers to shed internal processors and batteries, thereby allowing for devices with lower power and weight requirements, and smaller form-factors. According to the filing, power and content would be wirelessly delivered to the devices from base stations, which also capture and act on user gestures and voice commands from across the room. It is easy to imagine this technology in the Kindle context, but the filing also details use cases for car windshields and glasses. The wireless power technology also paves the way for remote sensors and displays that could be used to capture and disseminate data in a decentralised fashion, all without the need for battery management.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of Nvidia’s dismissal of next-gen console processing power, a videogame controller for your feet, real-life Medi-gel, and more on science’s intention to destroy us all with robots.

Nvidia bares teeth, gnaws on PS4 specs

“Compared to gaming PCs, the PS4 specs are in the neighborhood of a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU side,” said Nvidia’s senior vice president of content and development Tony Tamasi in a scathing interview with TechRadar. “If the PS4 ships in December as Sony indicated, it will only offer about half the performance of a GTX680 GPU (based on GFLOPS and texture), which launched in March 2012, more than a year and a half ago.”

Tamasi goes on to point out that the closed nature of console platforms means that upgrades are impossible, and if history repeats itself, “these next-generation consoles, while being more powerful than the current ones, will very quickly end up more than an order of magnitude behind the PC.” In a tonally similar interview with Gamespot, Tamasi insinuated that Nvidia considered and discarded the idea of working with Sony on the PS4, “I’m sure there was a negotiation that went on and we came to the conclusion that we didn’t want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay.”

Logitech release G series rebranded line of gaming peripherals

It’s been a while since Logitech last refreshed their range of gaming peripherals, but the newly announced Logitech G series is set to change that, and bring with it some thoughtful design choices that could benefit gamers of any stripe. The lineup includes four new mice, two keyboards, and two headsets. The new series focuses on comfort and customisation options, with vented surfaces, hydrophobic coatings, and fingerprint-resistant shiny bits designed to protect the fancy new gear from we sweaty users. Stay tuned for some fast-talking with Charles, the Gaming Community Coordinator at Logitech as he runs us through the new range.

The Stinky Footboard turns fancy footwork into keyboard inputs

While the name is somewhat self-deprecating, the company behind the Stinky Footboard is confident in the need for their upcoming oddball foot-controlled peripheral. “Why should we limit ourselves to two hands to control games?,” says Luc Levasseur, co-founder and R&D Director, Stelulu Technologies to MaximumPC’s Paul Lilly. The concept is that the Stinky Footboard sits on the floor, and the user rests their foot on the surface.

The Footboard should remain centred when the user is at rest, but respond to them tilting their foot in any of the four cardinal directions. Tension springs can be individually switched out for heavier or lighter versions based on the preference of the user. The four buttons can be mapped to keyboard inputs, and used in the same way. For example, forward and back could be respectively mapped to accelerate and break in driving games, or the four buttons could be used for weapons or inventory management in shooters and character action games. Stelulu intend to float the concept on Kickstarter after gathering public hands(feet?)-on impressions at PAX East.

Taking the “fiction” out of science fiction: Medi-gel is very nearly an actual thing

A substance named Veti-Gel has been developed by NYU student Joe Landolina, which is astonishingly similar to the all-purpose Mass Effect fixer-upper, Medi-gel. Veti-Gel is designed to instantly stop bleeding upon the application of the substance to any open wound, without the need to apply pressure. “In all of our tests we found we were able to immediately stop bleeding,” says Landolina in a recent interview with Humans Invent. “Your skin has this thing called the extracellular matrix,” he explains. “It’s kind of a mesh of molecules and sugars and protein that holds your cells in place.”

Landolina is able to synthesise ECM using plant polymers, which forms the basis of Veti-Gel’s amazing restorative properties. “It goes into the wound and the pieces of the synthetic ECM in the gel will recognise the pieces of the real ECM in the wound and they’ll link together. It will re-assemble into something that looks like, feels like and acts like skin.” The video below demonstrates Veti-Gel’s ability to stop profuse bleeding, but if the sight of blood makes you queasy, maybe you’d be better off taking our word for it.

Robotic birds of prey could spell the end of aquabots and robo-rodents everywhere

Okay, what is it with researchers attaching claws to robots? First BigDog was given a cinderblock-throwing arm, and now researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have attached a claw to a quadrotor, which can snatch up stationary objects while flying past at horrifyingly high speeds.

Taking inspiration from birds of prey, an articulated 3D-printed claw has been designed to hang from centre-point of a quadrotor chassis, and can scoop up its “prey” while travelling at a startling three meters per second. The researchers plan to add a camera to the system that would allow the quadrotor and claw to automatically adjust angle of attack and elevation to improve accuracy and success. Eventually the researchers hope that UAVs fitted with limbs will be used to open doors and carry burdens from locations unsafe for human access.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of how EA is exploring hooking Frostbite 2 into the Oculus Rift, what to expect from the next Havok physics engine, and how engineers at Caltech have created self-healing circuitry that can rebuild itself in a matter of microseconds.

EA exploring avenues for delivering Frostbite directly into your eyeballs

Frostbite 2, the engine behind Battlefield 3 and Dragon Age 3 may well be getting Oculus Rift support, Eurogamer reports. In an email conversation with Neil Schneider over at MTBS3D, DICE Creative Director for Frostbite Frank Vitz confirmed that an enthusiastic portion of the Frostbite team are looking into the possibility of having the engine worth with the Oculus Rift, and claims to be “one of the guys on the frostbite team pushing hard for it. I am really eager to see how the Oculus Rift works with Frostbite.”

Vitz is careful to make it clear that this is very much an exploratory action at this stage, and implies that that the development kits that they will be working with are owned by members of the team, rather than EA, “I have one of the first Rift dev kits coming my way in March. We have an internal community eager to work on it… I know of at least four kits on order,” he says. Vitz is cautiously optimistic, saying “There are multiple titles in the works that would be awesome with the Rift. Of course it will be the responsibility of each game team to ensure that their game works in S3D and with the Rift if it proves to be viable.”

He mentions that the basic integration with Frostbite 2 should be “pretty straight forward,” but that getting 3D to work with “different kinds of game play cameras,” can be difficult and that he has “worked with several VR headsets in the past and they all fell short.” (Thanks to Darren for sending this in)

Nvidia to provide PhysX and APEX support to Sony PlayStation 4

Nvidia have announced via press release that they are providing PhysX and APEX support for the Sony PlayStation 4. The traditionally GPU-punishing physics technologies are used for “collision detection and simulation of rigid bodies, clothing, fluids, particle systems,” and will be actively supported by Nvidia. Despite the fact that Nvidia state in the press release that these technologies perform best on “any CUDA® architecture-enabled NVIDIA GPU, GeForce 8-series or higher,” the PlayStation 4 is reported to be shipping with an AMD APU, and a Radeon-based graphics adaptor.

Havok Physics to get even more physical in next version

In more physics tech news, Havok have announced the next-gen version of their prolific middleware physics solution, Havok Physics. The next version of Havok is designed to support next-gen consoles, and modern PC configurations, while maintaining support for current generation systems. According to Andrew Bond, Vice President of Technology at Havok, “Beta versions of the technology have been in the hands of a number of leading developers for some time and we have seen dramatic performance gains with simulations running twice as fast or more, and using up to 10 times less memory.

Additionally the new core’s performance is extremely predictable, eliminating performance spikes. We are genuinely excited to see how game designers will harness the additional power that we are offering with this release.” These claims are backed up in the press release by Laurent Gorga, Technical Director at 2K Czech who says “we’ve been blown away by how Havok’s new physics technology is able to make highly efficient utilization of all available hardware cores with a very lean runtime memory footprint.” Havok make no mention of new engine features, but the performance improvements alone make the prospect of physics-heavy simulations far less daunting for a wider range of hardware profiles.

Valve and Xi3 curtly tango atop the incorporeal Steam Box

In a recent statement, Valve seemed to be distancing itself from Xi3 and the Piston console, saying “Valve began some exploratory work with Xi3 last year, but currently has no involvement in any product of theirs.” In a prepared response, Xi3 Corporation President, CEO, and founder Jason A. Sullivan said, “We reaffirm the fact that we received an investment from Valve Corporation (as we previously disclosed during the 2013 International CES trade show), and we did so with Valve’s written permission.” He goes on, “Second, we were asked to build a product specifically for Valve, and both companies showcased this product – the Piston console – in their respective booths at CES 2013.”

He then went on to explain the distancing, “the assumption of many in the media has been that Piston is the ‘official’ Steam Box,” said Sullivan. “We’ve never said that and neither has Valve. That hasn’t changed. But just because Valve may not ‘currently’ have any ‘involvement with any product of (ours)’ doesn’t mean that such involvement won’t exist in the future.” He closes with a cheeky invitation, “what Valve does or doesn’t do with its Steam Box will be up to them. So Gabe, it’s up to you. The ball is in your court.”

Self-healing chipsets could be the harbinger of our doom, but will be super-convenient until then

Last week we learned about growing semiconductors, and this week we continue inexorably toward the robo-destruction of humanity with the discovery of self-healing circuits. Engineers from the High-Speed Integrated Circuits laboratory in Caltech’s Division of Engineering and Applied Science, have developed a series of self-healing integrated circuits that can automatically recover from damage that would render other circuits inoperable. Whether it is something as simple as unreliable battery power, to full transistor failure, these self-healing circuits are able to automatically work around the problem transistors in less than a second.

As engineers are wont to do, the Caltech boffins tested the chips by subjecting them to multiple blasts from a high-power laser, “It was incredible the first time the system kicked in and healed itself. It felt like we were witnessing the next step in the evolution of integrated circuits,” says Ali Hajimiri, the Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech. “We had literally just blasted half the amplifier and vaporized many of its components, such as transistors, and it was able to recover to nearly its ideal performance.” The full results of the tests are available in the March issue of IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of DARPA’s block-throwing mule robot BigDog, growing semiconductors, making Windows 8 more windowsy, and making people’s heartbeats visible in video.

BigDog has been armed

Boston Dynamics’ DARPA-funded rough-terrain robot, the horrifying BigDog now has a brand new appendage. Not only can BigDog not be knocked down, but now it is capable of retaliating with cinderblocks. By twisting its body and combining the strength of the throwing arm and four gambrel-jointed legs, BigDog can throw a cinderblock with little effort, and enough power that the block is reduced to gravel upon impact.

Research suggests that semiconductors could be grown rather than printed

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have developed a method for the growth of semiconductors, using a self-assembly method that it is hoped will not lead to Replicators turning humans into fertiliser for their semiconductor farms. The method involves suspending nanoparticles of gold in a flowing gas, which then acts as a substrate from which semiconductors can be grown. The resulting “nanowire” can be quickly produced using customised ovens which “bake” the nanowires, thus removing the need for the expensive semiconductor wafers used today. “The process is not only extremely quick, it is also continuous. Traditional manufacture of substrates is batch-based and is therefore much more time-consuming,” says Professor Lars Samuelson, discoverer of the technology. Professor Samuelson believes that the technology could be ready for commercialisation in two to four years’ time.

ModernMix puts the “windows” back in Windows 8

Stardock Corporation, a company with an eclectic stable of generally well-regarded software ranging from desktop enhancement suites such as WindowBlinds, to games like Sins of a Solar Empire and the Elemental series, has announced their latest tool for nostalgic Windows 8 users, ModernMix. Similar in motivation to their previous Start8 application, ModernMix aims to restore an element of older Windows generations to Microsoft’s latest OS by allowing the user to capture Windows 8 applications and display them in a window. Before ModernMix, Windows 8 applications could only be run in either full-screen, or docked to the left or right of the screen. With ModernMix, Windows 8 users can place their “modern” applications wherever they wish, without needing to break out of the desktop paradigm.

MIT project amplifies the tiniest of movements

MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has produced a video amplification process which they hope will allow humans to translate the minuscule  almost imperceptible movements of the world into information that can be used for a variety of applications. The original plan for this technology was to allow parents to be able to remotely observe the shallow breathing of infants, and even see their heartbeat with little more than a camera, thus avoiding the use of invasive sensors. The technology works by determining the colour of the pixels in a frame of video, and then analysing the changing colours on a frame-by-frame basis. It then amplifies these colour changes 100 times, and overlays this amplification onto the video feed. The resulting video makes even the tiny heartbeat of the child obvious to the viewer, and could put risk-averse parents’ minds at ease without needing to disturb the child. It is speculated that the technology could even be applied to portable devices such as Google Glass, giving the wearer a live translation of the body language of those around them.

Microsoft’s $711m European mistake

Microsoft has been fined $711m for a mistake they are attributing to a “technical error”. In 2009, Microsoft made a commitment to EU competition regulator The European Commission to include a pop-up screen which would alert Windows users to the availability of alternate browsers to Internet Explorer. The pop-up was found to have been removed after an update to Windows 7 in February 2011, and the Commission believes that Microsoft was in breach of their undertaking between May 2011 and July 2012. “Legally binding commitments reached in antitrust decisions play a very important role in our enforcement policy because they allow for rapid solutions to competition problems,” says competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia in a prepared statement. According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, Microsoft took full responsibility for the breach and cut CEO Steve Ballmer’s bonus last year partly as a result. (Thanks to Eddy for sending this through!)

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of the arrest of one of Australia’s most notable hackers, the tech behind Lara’s latest luscious locks, and the suit that can give you one of Spiderman’s most useful abilities.

Australia’s very own SuperDaE raided by Australian police and an FBI agent

According to a recent article at Kotaku, the hacker known as SuperDaE has been arrested by Australian police working in conjunction with an FBI agent. SuperDaE, who self-identifies as an Australian resident named Dylan, claims that he is being investigated for his recent hacking activities, most notably that which targeted Epic Games and Microsoft Corporation. He maintains that his activities were born of curiosity, and from a desire to see the companies whose work he loves and supports to shore up their security efforts.

SuperDaE also claims to have development kits for Microsoft’s next-gen console codenamed Durango, which were listed on eBay before being pulled. The article goes into quite a bit of detail regarding the communications between SuperDaE and Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo, but is careful to constantly remind the reader to “judge for yourself” when it comes to the unverified evidence provided by the hacker. Alleged copies of the search warrant and evidence seizure manifests were provided to Kotaku and are included in the article.

Leap Motion set to leap into motion in May

San Francisco-based startup Leap Motion hopes to take motion waggle control to the next level, and potentially encroach upon the Kinect for market share in motion control for Windows applications. Their Leap Motion controller is a small desk-mounted device which can translate the motions of the users’s hands and ten fingers into multiple point control within a 3D environment. Leap Motion mentions in a recent press release that “a few of the expected applications for the Leap Motion Controller include: plug-ins for 3D design software leader Autodesk; Corel’s Painter apps; Disney Interactive’s Wreck-It Ralph: Sugar Rush Speedway racing game; top independent game maker Double Fine’s music game Dischord; The Weather Channel app; and ZeptoLab’s optimized Cut the Rope, a top casual game app.”

The Leap Motion is due for release on May 19th.

Maybe she’s born with it? Maybe it’s TressFX

This week, AMD unveiled their latest innovation in TressFX Hair. Hair rendering has long been the butt of many a joke at videogames’ expense and rightly so; accurately calculating and rendering the movement of so many individual fibres has required a level of computational sophistication and raw power that simply hasn’t existed in average consumer PCs and consoles up until this point. According to AMD, this is all about to change with the release of the upcoming Tomb Raider, claiming that “TressFX Hair revolutionizes Lara Croft’s locks by using the DirectCompute programming language to unlock the massively-parallel processing capabilities of the Graphics Core Next architecture.”

TressFX Hair is designed to treat “each strand of hair as a chain with dozens of links,” which means that it can be acted upon by the physics simulation in game, and in real-time. AMD claim that graphics cards that feature their Graphics Core Next architecture are best suited to the task, but given the fact that DirectCompute isn’t an AMD technology, there is nothing stopping Nvidia from including support on future cards. It remains to be seen how severely TressFX Hair will affect framerates in modern titles.

No cross-platform support for Diablo III, in any sense

When long-time Blizzard game designer Chris Metzen took the stage during the Sony PlayStation 4 announcement, many held their breath. Despite the audibly underwhelmed applause that followed the revelation Diablo III would be coming to Sony’s next-gen console, the Internet has been a-flutter at the idea of being able to play Diablo III with their staunchly console-only friends. Unfortunately, this hope has been dashed by a post on the Battle.net forums that clearly states that there are no plans to allow connectivity between the PlayStation Network and Battle.net.

Those hoping to be able to plug a controller into their PC for a more lean-back Diablo III experience were equally deflated by the post, as were console owners hoping to make use of a mouse and keyboard on PS3 or PS4.

My SpiderSense is tingling: The suit that lets you feel sound

Victor Mateevitsi of the University of Illinois in Chicago has developed a suit he calls SpiderSense, which is designed to provide the wearer with an ability akin to that which gives Spider-Man his superhuman capacity for avoiding danger. By making use of an array of directional ultrasound microphones, SpiderSense reacts to sounds by actuating small robotic arms, which in turn apply pressure to corresponding points on the wearer’s body.

In a series of tests with fellow students, Mateevitsi blindfolded the wearer and tasked them to throw cardboard throwing stars at any targets presented by SpiderSense. “Ninety five per cent of the time they were able to sense someone approaching and throw the star at them,” said Mateevitsi in an interview with New Scientist. He hopes that the suit could be put to use in giving cyclists greater awareness of the traffic around them, or to help the blind to safely negotiate their environment. Mateevitsi and his collaborators plan to present SpiderSense at the 4th Augmented Human International Conference in Stuttgart next month.

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of how Google is getting ready to deploy their new Glass tech in a public test (for an enormous price), more on the upcoming stoush between AMD and Intel, and how one day — maybe soon — we’ll actually be able to lick the internet.

Google Glass is available for limited, spendy pre-order

On Wednesday, Google released a new preview of Google Glass, their augmented reality head-mounted display tech that is set to turn us all into somewhat less capable simulacrums of Geordi La Forge. This isn’t the first time that Google have demonstrated Glass to the public, but their “How It Works” video below gives a far clearer impression of how the device could be used in the real world, and even shows off some previously unannounced features, such as real-time phrase translation.

Anyone interested in getting their hands on Google Glass early needs to jump through some pretty stringent hoops. First, apply for selection by freely advertising Glass on social media. Second, give Google $1500USD. Third, be living in the USA.

Steam for Linux officially released

As of Friday 15^th, Steam for Linux is officially released from beta. While the catalogue of games available with full Linux support is rather limited at the moment, Valve’s store-level support, and partnership with Ubuntu developer Canonical proves that they are committed to making Linux a far more viable and widespread gaming platform. Speaking at the DICE summit earlier this month, Gabe Newell called Linux a “get out of jail free pass for our industry, if we need it.” Newell clearly sees Linux as a way to get out from underneath the heel of closed-platform operating systems, “we’ll come out with our own [Steam Box] and we’ll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That’ll be a Linux box,” he claimed in January. Time will tell whether or not Valve’s vote of confidence will prove to be enough for Linux to gain a greater user following against Apple and Microsoft.

If you’re interested in giving Steam for Linux a try, don’t forget that Ubuntu is available from our very own file mirror.

Former head of AMD has his say on the fight with Intel in upcoming book

According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz’s upcoming novel Slingshot “comes with heavy doses of David versus Goliath imagery,” which isn’t surprising given that it is subtitled “AMD’s Fight To Free An Industry From The Ruthless Grip Of Intel.” According to Ruiz, AMD took the risk of filing a major antitrust case against Intel after previously excited U.S. and Asian PC manufacturers began backing away from their commitments to AMD, after alleged Intel financial inducements or threats. Though the case itself is old news, the insights included in the novel shed some light into how AMD structured their case, the $1.2 billion settlement, and the spinoff of their manufacturing division into what is now known as Globalfoundries. Slingshot will be available for purchase from April 23.

Steve Ballmer is “super-glad” Microsoft built Surface

Jason Pontin, Editor-in-Chief of MIT Technology Review, recently had an opportunity to speak with Steve Ballmer on the topic of Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface. Pontin questions about the adoption rate of Windows 8, which Ballmer handled with confident aplomb, going on to assert that “the adoption rate is perfect.” When the conversation turned to Microsoft Surface however, Ballmer’s repeated sweaty insistence that “Surface is a real business,” seems to imply that despite less than stellar sales, Microsoft plan to continue to push the Surface in a market dominated by their competitors.

Hopefully one day we will be able to lick the Internet

Given the number of senses available to the average human body, it is odd that we generally only use three of them to accept input from our digital devices. Our eyes look at screens, our ears listen to speakers, and our hands respond to rumbling controllers. Gershon Dublon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has had enough, and hopes that his project Tongueduino will give us an opportunity to put our flappy mouth bits to work in the digital realm.

Tongueduino is a “display” which rests on the tongue, and uses a three by three grid of electrodes to impart information to the user. The electrodes are individually identifiable to the user, despite their proximity, thanks to the high sensitivity of the human tongue. Dublon believes that Tongueduino could lead to “open-ended sensory augmentation that anyone can access,” and asks enviously during the video below that “sharks have electro-reception, why can’t we?”

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of how researchers at MIT have created genetic circuits which function as Boolean logic gates, how we’re expecting a 7nm process technology as soon as 2017, and how Gamestop feels about the idea of consoles that block used game sales.

Your body is a temple, and could one day be a computer

Synthetic biologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, have developed a set of simple genetic circuits which function similarly to the Boolean AND, OR, and NAND logic gates that form the basis of all modern complex computing algorithms.

James Collins, a synthetic biologist of the Boston University in Massachusetts and the inventor of the genetic ‘toggle switch’ that makes all of this research possible, told nature.com that “these developments will more readily enable one to create programmable cells with decision-making capabilities for a variety of applications.”

Timothy Lu, one of the synthetic biologists at MIT responsible for the study, says that the approach could be useful in biotechnology. Manufacturers could grow cell cultures that could permanently start the production of a drug, while others could halt production when an arbitrary threshold has been reached.

32 nanometre process technology? Pshaw. 7nm could be here as early as 2017

GlobalFoundries, the world’s second-largest independent semiconductor foundry, announced their long term plans at the Common Platform Technology Forum earlier this month, including their goal of developing incomprehensibly small 7 nanometre process technology by 2017, reports Xbit Labs.

Current generation Core i7 processors make use of a 32nm process, which is widely considered to be an efficient platform for today’s computing requirements. GlobalFoundries plans to initiate production using 20nm process technology in 2013, which will then be used to enable production of hybrid 14nm/20nm process technology in 2014. This will lead the way to hybrid 10nm/14nm process tech in 2015, all in an effort to make it to 7nm, a process so small it has me struggling to find a word that will describe it more accurately than “miniscule”.

Gabe Newell hitches Valve’s cart to PC-to-TV streaming

During his Day 2 keynote at the DICE 2013 summit, Gabe Newell made it quite clear that he believes that PC-to-TV streaming will be the standard method for playing high-spec PC games in our living rooms, and will arrive in the form of three tiers.

According to Newell, the “good” tier would initially involve a traditional PC, dedicated to in-home streaming. It would only need to be powerful enough to stream video to any HDTV on your network, and should only initially cost around $100. This price would eventually drop to zero as manufacturers begin to build the capability directly into HDTVs.

The middle, or “better” tier, would take the form of a small, low-powered PC connected to your TV, which seems to most closely resemble the Steam Box that Valve and Xi3 announced in January. Newell went on to note that Apple already have a significant foothold in this tier, due to their “huge unit advantage,” and that “Apple has a much more natural progression into the living room with fundamentally industry-to-industry competitive advantages that I think are more threatening to the PC moving into the living room than anything that would be happening on the console side.”

Finally, Newell described the “best” tier, a more traditional scenario of a standalone gaming desktop that users can build and upgrade as they wish. He believes this to be the most scalable solution, noting that “if you want a $4000 living room box, I’m sure there are lots of PC vendors who are going to send that to you.”

Apple and Samsung: Enemies with benefits

Apple CEO Tim Cook was initially opposed to suing Samsung for patent infringement as part of Steve Jobs’ “thermo-nuclear war” approach to keeping clones off the market, reports Reuters. Citing the role that Samsung plays in providing critical components of both the iPhone and iPad, Cook opposed Jobs in his litigious stance against the manufacturer of the ever-increasingly popular Galaxy series of Android-based smartphones. Analysts report that Apple bought some $8 billion worth of parts from Samsung in 2012, so it would be safe to assume that an all-out war between the two would make Cook nervous.

Despite the fact that Cook would “highly prefer to settle,” he has remained steadfast in his obligation to see the lawsuits through to completion, and has stated that he believes that Apple’s competitors need to “invent their own stuff.”

According to GameStop, 60% of customers won’t buy a new console that blocks used games

GameStop CFO Rob Lloyd recently defended the used game trade during the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference (as reported by VG247), stating that “Consumers want the ability to play pre-owned games, they want portability in their games; they want to play physical games. And to not have those things would be a substantial reason for them not to purchase a new console.”

Lloyd made reference to research conducted by GameStop which backs up his claims, “I think it was 60% of customers who said they wouldn’t buy a new console [if it blocks used games],” he said. It should be noted that it is unclear exactly how this research was conducted, but it is likely that the results come from self-selected customers filling out an online questionnaire.

Forbes’ reported that nearly 40% of their price estimate (based on their third fiscal quarter 2012 earnings report) for GameStop was attributed to used game sales.

How would you like 40Gb/s broadband connections?

A team of researchers at the UK’s Bangor University are pretty sure they’ve got a way to boost broadband speeds up to a staggering 40Gb/s without increasing costs. The speeds, about 2000 times faster than the best of us today, are possible as a result of a method called Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, or OOFDM.

The key breakthrough, according to the BBC, is a new piece of electronics that can encode and decode optical signals on the fly. Currently they’ve been able to reach speeds of 20Gb/s, but they’re pretty sure they can push 40 very soon. Industry partners including Fujitsu, the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Finisar Israel, and VPIsystems are working with the team, who have started a three-year project with the goal of making the tech commercially viable.

Razer accused of putting DRM in their mice, only not really

There was a bit of a kerfuffle earlier this week when this post on Overclock.net complained that a Razer mouse could not be used until the user had created an account with Razer’s Synapse program. Sounds fine in theory, but the problem was that the account creation servers were down — meaning the user had purchased a mouse they literally couldn’t use.

Later the servers came back up of course and everything was fine, but the damage was done: Razer were accused roundly of putting DRM into the very hardware we use and stopping legitimate players from using the products they paid for. Enter Razer’s CEO with this explanation on Facebook:

“We had an issue for four hours recently when users were unable to register for new Synapse 2.0 accounts. Current users of Synapse 2.0 were unaffected. We are working on new ways to keep these types of issues from occurring.”

Razer are also promising to make offline mode clearer for users — currently, once the account has been registered, the mouse will work even offline, but Razer are planning to take steps to make this more obvious.

MegaUpload successor shut down before it even takes off

The recent high-profile shutdown of MegaUpload by The Authorities resulted in its founder, Kim Dotcom (yes, really) announcing the creation of its successor, me.ga, registered in the West African nation of Gabon.

Well, turns out that even Gabon isn’t a big fan of Kim Dotcom’s activities. The Gabon Ministry of Telecommunications minister Blaise Louembe said in a statement that his country “cannot serve as a platform or screen for committing acts aimed at violating copyrights, nor be used by unscrupulous people”. Meanwhile, Dotcom’s attorney claims the launch is on track, but probably under a different name. More at Tom’s Hardware.

Apple shares way down as company collects more increasingly dumb patents

Apple’s share prices have dropped by 20% to a five-month low since the iPhone 5 launched in September. The company is now valued at $530 billion down from $660 billion in September, a loss that would be cataclysmic to nearly any other company, but one which is apparently not too much of a cause for concern at Apple. Strong competition from Android phones, which continue to outsell Apple products at least five to one in nearly all markets, is suspected to be behind the drop, as is a less-than-stellar reception of the smaller iPad thing they made.

Meanwhile, Apple has literally won the right to patent “rectangles with rounded corners”, the same phrase that Samsung jokingly said was impossible to patent during their court battles. Ars Technica is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office have awarded Apple the patent to the iPad’s “ornamental design”, which — if a reading of the patent diagram is to be believed — literally includes the rights to a rectangle with rounded corners. Ars notes that this is unlikely to give them an advantage in court, as nobody is currently trying to copy the iPad. Still: worrying.

Microsoft rumoured to be investigating a tiny gaming tablet of its own

The Verge is reporting that Microsoft are building their own 7-inch tablet specifically for gaming, under the codename of the “Xbox Surface”. Sources apparently familiar with the project confirmed to the publication that the specs leaked back in June are accurate and final implementation is being worked on.

The tablet will reportedly include a custom ARM processor and high-bandwidth RAM designed specifically for gaming. Microsoft have even reportedly developed a secret manufacturing process for the device, separate from their traditional manufacturing partners. As Microsoft recently locked down several of their buildings in Silicon Valley, it’s believed that the device is at a critical juncture. Microsoft, naturally, is refusing to comment.

Intel’s new line of SSDs slash power draw in half

Intel are shortly set to release a new range of SSDs — the new 335 Series — that boast the same speeds as before, but with one important difference: they’ve implemented new 20nm NAND flash modules.

The smaller sized modules mean that the 335 Series need only draw miniscule amounts of power: 350mW under load and 275mW idle are the figures provided by Intel, which is a substantial drop down from the 850mW under load and 600mW idle that their current 25nm range require. By comparison, the OCZ Vertex 4 draws 2,500mW under load. Dang.

As PC Gamer points out, this should hopefully mean that high-end laptops featuring SSD’s will become even more of a possibility: lower power draws and increased efficiency through Windows 8 stands to bring an even longer battery life. Good stuff.

IBM demonstrates carbon nanotube transistors: five to ten times faster than modern CPU’s

It’s still a ways off being real, applicable technology, but let’s not that stop us from getting righteously excited: IBM have demonstrated a new way to build transistors out of carbon nanotubes that were as small as 10nm. And they’re confident they can go even further, possibly down to 5nm.

IBM’s modelling of the process, shown at the recent Intel Developer Forum, suggests that a chip made out of carbon nanotubes could offer performance anywhere from five to ten times better than current CPU models, which only go as small as 22nm (although Intel’s Broadwell CPU’s are aiming for 14nm in 2014).

Carbon nanotubes are currently just a Wacky Science Thing that people look at occasionally, but IBM thinks they’ve found a way to solve the problem of controlled, precise transistor placement that has made carbon nanotube chips infeasible before. Time will tell!

Apple releases snarkiest court-ordered statement in the history of court-ordered statements

Image via Android Authority.

Unless you are, or have been living under a rock then you’d be aware that Samsung and Apple are currently slugging it out in the courts of almost every major country in the world over patent infringements related to the iPhone and the Galaxy S. Recently, Apple lost out to Samsung in the UK, and as a result were ordered to publish an statement acknowledging their defeat. You probably won’t have seen it, because it’s only on their UK site, and it’s in the tiniest text possible, buried at the bottom of the screen.

In their statement, Apple make brief mention of how they lost, before going on to say that the judge mentioned the Apple products had “a cool design” and were “understated, smooth and simple”. Meanwhile, Apple points out that the judge said Samsung’s products were “not as cool” and “do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity”. Apple then go on to point out that German courts think that Samsung copied the iPad, and a United States jury found that Samsung actually did copy the iPhone. It’s essentially the snarkiest thing I’ve ever seen a company release — so snarky in fact, that the UK court has ordered them to rewrite it.

Let’s all take a moment to remember that Apple pays Samsung literally billions of dollars every year to buy microprocessors from them for use in their iPhones. Now, let’s all scream together, into this cupboard (thanks, Jagji).

Microsoft goes ahead with plans to allow gold members only to browse the internet on Xbox 360

Spkypwnsuall writes in to point us to this Xbox LIVE newsletter, which seems to confirm what Microsoft announced back in June: Xbox 360’s will only be able to browse the web if they pay for a gold membership. This recent change came into effect with the release of Windows 8, and means that the Xbox 360 is now the only console on the market that makes you pay money to browse the internet.

Quite why you’d use an Xbox 360 and not, say, your computer, tablet, smartphone, PS3 or even Wii is beyond me, but hey! Those gold memberships don’t pay for themselves. Thanks Spkypwnsuall!

The Microsoft Surface and the iPad Mini launch, reviews start to come in

The last week has seen the launch of both the Microsoft Surface and the iPad Mini, with tech sites around the world putting up their reviews for both.

Anandtech calls the Surface “the most flexible tablet we’ve ever used”, praising its inclusion of Office, USB ports, and ease-of-use of the touch-type cover screen. The same review also criticises the Surface’s HDMI output, with complaints of screen tearing, poor scaling and frame rate issues. Meanwhile, CNET calls it an “innovative tablet stranded in an app desert”, complaining that while the Metro interface may be perfect for tablets and the keyboard is perfect for typing, the Microsoft Store is a “ghost town” and the “desktop interface is clunky and useless”. Wired was very enthusiastic about the hardware design, while criticising the laggy, “junk” cameras and the total lack of usable software.

As for the iPad mini, The Verge claims that “there’s no question that the screen does look lower res” and saying it was overly expensive, but praised the rich selection of apps and great battery life. CNET say the size is perfect, but also offer a round criticism of the expensive price saying that “good alternatives are available for less money.” On the flip side, Engadget criticise the iPad Mini’s size, saying it’s too big for just one hand, but praised its “astonishing” battery life of over 12 hours continuous video playback and says that “to consider it just a cheap, tiny iPad is a disservice”.

Thanks to our tireless tech moderator steve_rogers42 for sending through a bunch of links, as usual!

NVIDIA launches GTX660Ti, gamers eagerly scramble

NVIDIA’s new card has dropped this week, the GeForce GTX660Ti. Reviews have been flooding the intertubes, including this one from Anandtech which describes it as “a more approachable point on the price-performance curve, offering about 88% of the GTX 670’s performance for 75% of the price”. Guru3D is offering a Gigabyte GTX660Ti Windforce review, calling it “downright perfect for those gaming at 1920×1080/1200″ but “a good chunk slower then the GTX 670″ unless overclocked. The aforementioned Guru3D piece also has some two- and three-way SLI tests, for those of you thinking about dropping dosh on multiple cards.

Prices at the moment for Australians are in the range of $350 – $400, but are expected to settle a little bit in the next week or so. Meanwhile, purchasing your GTX660 from overseas will get you a free Steam copy of Borderlands 2, apparently – as long as you purchase from participating “e-tailers”. That is a terrible pun NVIDIA, be ashamed.

AMD responds: price cut for 7950, relaunches with BOOST

Not a free chocolate bar, but an improved clockspeed for the re-released AMD Radeon 7950. The 7950 is set to receive the same performance enhancements that the 7970 received back in June, increasing the base clock speed (anywhere from 6% – 16%) as well as introducing GPU turbo boost functionality. The power consumption has increased as a result, but it could be the boost your card needs to last another few months. The BIOS with these BOOST features can already be found online but may void your warranty, so head to your card manufacturer’s website and see what they have to say. More info at AnandTech.

Razer releases ‘Deathstalker Ultimate’ keyboard and ‘Kraken’ headsets

‘DeathStalker Ultimate’? Calm down Razer, it’s okay! The new keyboard includes their ‘Switchblade’ interface which can be found on the SW:TOR keyboard, which we took at look at in our Epic Razer Rundown last month, with a “customizable control panel with 10 dynamic, adaptive tactile keys” for binding “commands, macros, skills and spells for an unparalleled in-game competitive advantage,” naturally. Meanwhile the new ‘Kraken’ headset is a bright green colour and “was field-tested by countless professional gamers and athletes to determine optimal weight for extended gaming sessions and snugness”. Get snuggly with a Kraken, today.

Intel confirms TRIM support for SSD’s on RAID-0 for 7-series motherboards

Previous SSD RAID setups on Intel were known to degrade over time because TRIM, or “garbage collection”, just wasn’t working. Intel have now confirmed that TRIM support is coming to RAID-0 setups with SSD’s in the near future, which should mean sustained ~1GB/s read performance on RAID-0 SSD’s. Great stuff from Intel, but you’ll need a 7-series motherboard (6-series chipsets are not supported), Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology (RST) for RAID driver version 11.0 or greater (11.2 is current), and Windows 7 (support is coming soon for Windows 8). Thanks to AnandTech!

Hypersonic $140m missile crashes unceremoniously into Pacific Ocean

The US Air Force’s much-touted X-51A “WaveRider” hypersonic missile, designed to be able to strike targets within minutes on the other side of the globe, has crashed into the Pacific Ocean during testing this week. This was the third test for the project, which has so far cost taxpayers an estimated $140 million USD, and delivered a series of very water-loving and crash-prone missiles instead of what one presumes are supposed to be dead commies. Ah well, it’s not rocket science – wait, no, it is rocket science. Yes. My bad. (Via DailyTech)

Bill Gates puts post-Microsoft years to good use by designing better toilets

Despite the headline, this is actually a pretty noble goal: the humble toilet is generally very inefficient when it comes to water, and this bothers Bill Gates because, well, he’s got a lot of money and time now that his creation is busy conquering the world of personal computing. This week in Seattle, Gates awarded prizes to three teams as part of a challenge to ‘reinvent the toilet’, in an attempt to conserve water that could actually be used for drinking or other actually useful things that aren’t getting rid of poop. Something to giggle about for your Friday then, or perhaps get really melancholy about the next time you take a bathroom break. (Via DailyTech)

Huge thanks to our tireless tech moderater steve_rogers42 for putting through some links this week.

Gigabyte releases Corrective BIOS Update for GTX 670 OC Windforce 3X

Which, coincidentally, happens to the card humming away in the computer I’m using to write this. I haven’t experienced any problems personally, but anybody who has been having trouble with theirs – stability issues mostly, according to Gigabyte – should grab this update BIOS and see if it helps. It won’t change your clock speed, but be sure to grab the right one as there’s two versions available. Users on TechPowerUp recommend using the VGA@BIOS tool to learn which version you need. Download the updated BIOS from this page.

Light up your computer with LED strip lighting, because, well, why not

Forget to buy LED fans when you put your computer together? Can’t be bothered going out and buying them? You’re in luck: Antec have just released a USB-powered LED strip lighting product that adheres to various surfaces and, well, lights up. Your choice of red and blue lights that “”increase picture quality and image contrast” and “allow longer and more enjoyable gaming by reducing eye fatigue” await you, as well as what Antec describe as a “convenient on/off switch”. Technology.

Windows 8 dumps ‘Metro’ name, RTM to arrive August 15

Enterprise customers, industry partners, and – well, a whole lot of people in fact – will get access to the RTM version of Windows 8 come August 15. While general launch is still on track for October 26, today’s new tidbit comes courtesy of The Verge, who reveal that The Metro Group, a German retail giant, have forced Microsoft to drop the ‘Metro’ codename for the UI. It’s not known what Microsoft will replace it with, but I’m sure there’s more than a few internet users who’d like them to replace the interface altogether. Amirite, guys? Amirite?

Pictures of MSI GTX 660 in 3-way SLI surface

MSI’s upcoming GeForce GTX 660 Ti HAWK 3 GB graphics card has been spotted on the internet configured in a 3-way SLI setup. The card looks similar to their 670, but MSI have doubled the memory amount to 3GB and clocked the card at 1020 MHz GPU core, 1098 MHz GPU Boost, and 6.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. The three card setup is also apparently being driven by a yet-unannounced GeForce 304.87 beta driver, and cooled by MSI’s Twin Frozr solution. More details and some benchmarks over at Videocardz.

Apple continues to carefully scrub all traces of Google from iOS

The ongoing cold war between Apple and Google continues, with Apple’s new strategy in iOS 6 being to just get rid of all traces of Google from their products. Google Maps is going, to be replaced with Apple Maps (??), and the YouTube app is going completely. Google has already removed the word ‘Google’ from the search field in Safari, so this is essentially just the next step in a kind-of-stupid but also kind-of-funny tit-for-tat battle. Naturally, Google will be providing a Google Maps and YouTube app over the App Store for iOS customers who actually want the things they’ve been using since the OS launched. Apple is blaming the YouTube app’s removal on an expired license, but considering they could have just, you know, renewed the license, it’s pretty clear where things stand. Via DailyTech.

Samsung produced 132-page report on superiority of iPhone, ordered staff to duplicate functions

The case of Samsung v. Apple rolls on in the courtrooms of America, with Samsung suffering a blow this week after they were forced to submit a document as evidence that shows the company going over the iPhone with a fine-toothed comb and noting down exactly where it is a superior product and directing its staff to copy features. The document, which can be read in its entirety at Scribd, examines nearly every aspect of Apple’s UI design and has made it hard for Samsung to rebut accusations from Apple that they “slavishly copied” them. Earlier this week however Samsung were able to tender very early-stage designs for a phone that predate Apple’s own iPhone design, winning back some ground in the actual physical-design stakes. Clearly, however, the company thought that Apple’s UI was one to replicate. More details at All Things D.

GeForce GTX 660 to be launched at Gamescom?

nVidia is set to launch the GTX 660 at Computex on August 16 according to well-placed sources within SweClockers, and more details of the card have been revealed. The card will have the same clock speed as the GTX 670 and have the same number of CUDA cores enabled, but the key difference will be in the width of the memory bus which has been reduced by 25% from 256-bit to 192-bit. TechPowerUp is predicting that the upcoming Gamescom event in Cologne, Germany will be used for an official unveiling.

Google launches ‘Google Fiber’ service

Google overnight revealed their plans for a new ‘Google Fiber‘ service, which is a Google’s own fibre-optic connection service that they claim is 100 times faster than today’s average broadband. The service is initially only rolling out in Kansas City in the USA, the service comes with Google’s own modem that allows you to record up to eight TV shows simultaneously, as well as a bunch of frankly fantastic options that demonstrate the power of fibre connections. There’s even a free option, assuming you’re willing to pay the $300 construction fee to get the hardware to your home. Yes, free internet. Alright then. Thanks, Novocaine.

Apple patents game controller

Oh Apple, you just can’t stay out of the games business, can you? GamesIndustry International yesterday revealed that Apple have been discovered filing patents for a game controller peripheral, one that looks suspiciously – okay, almost exactly like – that of the PlayStation 3. An illustrative diagram for the controller shows it interacting directly with an iPhone, so there’s no doubt that Apple intend to lock down the ability of controller-like peripherals to integrate with their hardware. The same patent also explores the possibility of using the iPhone as a universal remote, with what looks suspiciously – okay, almost exactly like – an Xbox 360 seen in the background. Alrighty then.

Intel i7-3970X revealed

A new report is claiming that the Intel Core i7-3970X will arrive in Q4 2012, claims DonanimHaber. The LGA2011 six-core processor will ship with clock speeds of 3.50 GHz, or 4.00 GHz with maximum Turbo Boost frequency. It is based on the 32 nm “Sandy Bridge-E” silicon, and, much like the Core i7-3960X, will come with HyperThreading, 15 MB shared L3 cache, and unlocked base-clock multiplier. Plus it’s got an X on the end, so you know it’s badass. X.

Razer launches new hardware

You’re probably sick of hearing about Razer lately, but they’ve just gone and announced two new products to be released later in this year and next: a 2013 edition BlackWidow keyboard (now with green backlighting instead of blue, much to James Pinnell’s delight) and the new configurable Ouroboros mouse. The Ouroboros comes with multiple configurable and detachable panels allowing it to change shape to suit all shapes and sizes of hands (as well as lefties) and a dedicated DPI clutch trigger that you can temporarily squeeze to change your DPI. Technology!

Samsung phones outselling Apple 2:1 in Q2 2012

Apple’s iPhones, normally viewed as a license to print money, were outsold at a staggering rate by Samsung in Q2 2012. Apple is still making money hand over fist in other departments of course, but news from the second quarter shows a drastic slump in iPhone sales of only 26 million units compared to 50 million from their rival Samsung, who they are currently engaged with in about fifty separate lawsuits across ten different countries internationally. Madness. Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S III smartphone shipped 19 million units alone, leaving many to wonder what Apple’s next move with the iPhone will be to regain momentum.

Thanks to our relentless tech moderator steve_rogers42 for sending through a bunch of links this week!

Raspberry Pi selling like raspberry hotcakes

The tiny Raspberry Pi computer, which has already been put to use in such diverse applications as exploring space and playing Quake 3, has now had its order cap lifted. 4,000 devices are being made every day to keep up with demand, which has so far been outstripping supply at a ferocious pace. Last Saturday the foundation behind the tiny computer announced than an official camera board was on its way, with a 5-megapixel camera device expected within a few months.  A bunch of enterprising young (very young!) programmers are doing a 48-hour Raspberry Pi coding marathon this weekend, which you can keep track of here.  For more information about Raspberry Pi, check out their site.

Steam officially coming to Linux

Valve deployed their official ‘Steam’d Penguins’ blog post on Tuesday from their Linux team, which is now apparently eleven members strong. The team have successfully ported Steam to Ubuntu in what they describe as a state “with all major features available”. Their next goal is the native support of Left 4 Dead 2 on Ubuntu because, well, you have to start somewhere.  The game is currently running on Ubuntu but apparently not in a desirable state, as the team mention the need to work to improve the framerate as a top priority. For more information on the Steam’d Penguins, check out their introductory blog post.

Microsoft Office 2013 customer preview is ready

Microsoft are apparently confident enough in Office 2013 to send it out for consumers to try, and you can now do so by clicking here. The new office promises what Microsoft are describing as “touch everywhere” controls and Windows 8 portability, along with a cripplingly cheerful promotional video that makes the Office 2013 suite look like about as much fun as a picnic, or a walk along the beach. Manipulate that spreadsheet data from anywhere – whether you’re sitting on a wall at your expensive university, or pausing in delight as a butterfly stops to rest on your outstretched finger, there’s never been a better way to enjoy documents. Thanks Ars.

Fanless “totally silent” Sandy Bridge desktop coming from SilentMaxx

Those lucky Germans get everything – first it’s the deliciously confusing currywurst, and now it’s the apparently completely silent Sandy Bridge e-Desktop from SilentMaxx. With a Core i7 3820 powered by a TwinMax CPU cooler and a passively cooled HD 7970 as well an SSD, it’s no wonder this thing runs as quietly as it apparently does. Seriously, look at that CPU cooler. What is that I don’t even. (Via TechPowerUp)

ASRock develops first web-based BIOS update tool

Sick of flashing your BIOS with a USB drive? Well, back in the day you had to use a floppy disk and a command line! Things are actually pretty good now, but hey, they can always improve: ASRock have announced that they’ll be releasing a web-based BIOS updater which only needs to be pointed to a working internet connection that uses the motherboard’s ethernet controller. The updater then phones home ET-style to the ASRock site to query for a new version, and automatically downloads, installs and updates itself. ASRock writes that upcoming motherboards “could” ship with this feature, and “select current ones could get this feature via a BIOS update” (which, presumably, will be with a USB drive). Thanks TechPowerUp.

GTX 660 to arrive mid-August

The new GeForce card is expected to roll out sometime between August 13 and 19, according to a report by SweClockers. The same report also lists the card as being based on the 28 nm GK104 GPU, with either 1,344 or 1,152 CUDA cores, and a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface with 1.5GB of actual memory. Nvidia will be hoping for the card to hit a nice balance between price and performance, expected (or at least widely hoped) to come in at under $300 US.  More at Videocardz.

Supercomputers mimicking the common cold in attempt to cure it

Australian scientists – universally acknowledged as the best scientists – have apparently been harnessing the power of technology to make supercomputers that mimic the movement and behaviour of the common cold in an attempt to better understand it. “This is the first time we’ve had enough computational capacity to actually model the entire virus,” claims Michael Kuiper of Melbourne University. Rhinovirus, which is the virus that causes the common cold, has never been modelled before, and so basically nobody has any idea how it works. Exciting! As somebody infected with the common cold right now, I’m hoping scientists can figure this out before tonight. Via the Sydney Morning Herald.

Price cuts on the way for Intel SSD’s

Intel’s SSD 320, 330 and 520 lines are set to receive price cuts as of August, bringing prices below $1 per GB for some models – at least in the US. TechPowerUp is quoting the 300 GB SSD 320 to go down from US $519 to $464, and the 600 GB SSD 320 to go down from $1,059 down to $879. The news comes from “reliable sources” over at VR-Zone, and will also include slashes to prices of around $100 on the 240 GB varieties. With SSD prices on the way down, this is great news for consumers – but bad news for me as I just picked up a 240 GB Intel SSD two weeks ago. Weep for me.

UK Judge rules consumers not actually confused by tablets

US Patent D504,889 might sound like an innocuous series of numbers, but it’s this patent that Apple has used to beat down a number of competitors in the tablet market. Laying claim to a tablet with “slightly rounded corners,” “a flat transparent surface without any ornamentation,” and “a thin profile”, Apple has tried to force Samsung to stop selling their own tablets in the US. They were successful in the colony, but back in the UK it’s a different story: UK Judge Colin Birss ruled that “unusual details” on the back of Samsung’s tablets and a thinner profile made them “trivial to distinguish” from Apple’s products and that it was “ludicrous” to suggest that consumers would somehow be confused by the pair.

Birss also took the opportunity to show off his enjoyment of Apple products, writing in his decision that “[The Galaxy Tab line] do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design… They are not as cool.” There you have it: Samsung are legally not as cool as Apple. Thanks Bloomberg.

453,000 Yahoo passwords hacked

The presumably cool kids at “D33ds Company” have hacked into Yahoo’s userbase and freed 453,000 passwords and usernames from imprisonment. The passwords were stored in plaintext by Yahoo in what experts are describing as “a really, really bad idea”, and were accessed with simple SQL injections. Military and government email addresses were also found amongst the list of leaked accounts – if you’re a Yahoo user, head over here to see the full list of compromised details and check that you haven’t wound up there. Via DailyTech.

New chip from MIT is powered by light, vibrations and heat

Having to charge your electronic devices is so last year – or it will be, once chips like this start being refined and mass-produced. Developed by the wizards at MIT, the ‘harvesting’ chip is capable of operating at extremely low power levels by drawing from natural light, heat and vibrations in the environment, and “could ultimately be used in biomedical devices, environmental sensors in remote locations and gauges in hard-to-reach spots”. As for me, I’m thinking controller batteries. The key here apparently is that this new chip is able to harvest from multiple sources at once, while existing chips have only been able to do one at a time. Science continues to be amazing. Via MIT.

Microsoft to acquire touchscreen technology company

Microsoft’s Surface tablet not withstanding, the company has clearly set its sights upon the touchscreen market. On Monday, they announced the acquisition of Perceptive Pixel Inc., who describe themselves as “a recognized leader in research, development and production of large-scale, multi-touch display solutions”. The company is hoping to bring that touchscreen technology to market soon, describing the creation of Windows 8-based PC’s utilising Perceptive Pixel’s expertise. Interesting times ahead for Microsoft!

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of the $49 Android PC, why Xbox 360′s could soon be banned from sale in the US, and Nvidia’s plans to address intermittent stuttering issues on the 600 series.

ITC Receives Recommendation For Ban on Xbox 360 Sales in US

In a potentially massive move, Judge David Shaw has recommended to the ITC that a ban be placed on the sale of Xbox 360 consoles in the United States due to patent infringements with Motorola, who recently won a court ruling against Microsoft over the issue. The ITC is not compelled to accept the judge’s recommendation, but if they do, it will become the Commission’s official stance and Microsoft will have to take their appeal to the Federal Circuit to get it overturned. More information on this at Shacknews.

Corsair Releases SSD Upgrade Kit for Notebooks

Most people want SSD’s – but how to go about transferring all that stuff across? Corsair have seen this gap in the market and fired up their engines to exploit it, with the launch of an ‘SSD Upgrade Kit’. The kit includes a USB-to-SATA cable, as well as a disc with migration software for transferring everything you need across from your old drive to your new. Handy stuff, and available in 120 and 240 GB sizes.

Aero is Gone in Windows 8

The first week of June will see the release of the Windows 8 Release Preview, and Microsoft have now revealed a huge change to the visual appearance of the Windows 8 desktop. The glass-like effect of Aero is now gone, and Microsoft is slagging it off as being “dated and cheesy”. In its place is a fairly modern and undeniably spartan interface, with square edges and less chrome elements. Take a look for yourself over at the MSDN blog.

Nvidia Responds to Stuttering Issue on 600 Series

Users complaining of stuttering issues with Kepler-series cards have had their concerns addressed by Nvidia, who has acknowledged the issue. The stuttering is only affecting small groups of users, but enough of them to warrant this enormous forum thread about the issue. Nvidia claim to have identified a fix for the bug, which comes from a driver issue, and are working on incorporating it into their next major driver release in June. “The interim workaround is to disable v-sync via the Nvidia Control Panel or in-game graphics settings menu,” reads Nvidia’s statement to Tom’s Hardware.

USD $49 Android PC Can Be Yours

VIA Technologies have launched their $49 Android PC, which is designed to allow people to get online quickly and cheaply. It’s got support for audio I/O, HD TV, hardware acceleration, four USB ports and ethernet, and is just 17 cm by 8.5 cm in size. Madness! There’s no information of pricing for Australians yet, but you can find a bunch more information, pictures and specs over at the official APC website. Take a look!

Second Gen Ultrabooks Begin to Roll In

The good folks over at AnandTech have reviewed the ASUS Zenbook Prime (UX21A), described as “the first of the second-gen ultrabooks”, and the results are looking very positive. According to the review, the Zenbook Prime improves on its predecessor in all areas, with a great display, superb wireless performance, and a vastly improved keyboard and trackpad. It still apparently chugs a bit while playing Diablo III, but what can you do?

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of how to control your computer fans remotely, how scientists are increasing efficiency of CPU’s by making them less accurate, and the SSD that self-destructs with the flick of a switch.

BitFenix Launches Remote Fan Controllers

The new BitFenix Recon Remote Fan Controller is exactly that: a remote fan controller! Ever wanted to check your fan speed and temperature over the web or on your phone? I haven’t personally, but I know of some who do – and now they can. The Recon has two microprocessors which interact with your motherboard to provide real-time status updates and allow users to save up to three fan presets. It’ll be available in Australia through PCCG and Scorptech, but there’s no mention of an AU RRP ($39 USD, though).

Razer’s Transforming Mouse Leaked, Shapes to Fit Lefties

The Razer Ouroboros gaming mouse has been leaked by the FCC in the US, and sports a completely symmetrical design for use by southpaws as well as – well, northpaws, I guess. It’s got nine buttons and a detachable cord so it can be used wired or wirelessly. The instruction manual is available for reading on the FCC website for those of you hungry for more details. Thanks, Engadget!

Superefficient Chip Created by ‘Inexact’ Computing

This week’s ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers in Cagliari, Italy, hosted the reveal of an ‘inexact’ chip prototype which increases efficiency by a huge margin simply by allowing the computer to make errors in calculation. “By cleverly managing the probability of errors and limiting which calculations produce errors, the designers have found they can simultaneously cut energy demands and dramatically boost performance,” reads the press release. “The ‘pruned’ chips were twice as fast, used half as much energy and were half the size”. Fascinating stuff – read all about it over at RICE.

Destroy Your SSD At The Flick Of A Switch With RunCore

Whether you’re an ASIO secret agent or you’re just worried about your… sensitive media collection being discovered by undesirable third parties, you can now erase that whole thang at the flick of a switch. RunCore have launched their ‘InVincible’ range of SSD’s, which will overwrite your whole drive instantly with garbage data, making it impossible to recover by any means – or so they claim. More information at RunCore’s site.

Apple Invites Kaspersky to Help With Security

Back at the end of April, Kaspersky famously slammed Apple as ”10 years behind on security”. Now Computing.co.uk has printed an interview with Kaspersky’s CTO Nikolai Grebennikov in which he claims Apple “recently invited us to improve its security”. “Our first investigations show Apple doesn’t pay enough attention to security. For example, Oracle closed a vulnerability in Java, which was a target for a major botnet several months ago,” said Grebennikov.

NVidia Releases Tesla K10 GPU Accelerator

For those of you reading this who are involved in searching for oil and gas reserves, or signal processing in the defence forces, you may want to grab yourself a new Nvidia Tesla K10. The K10 is based on the same Kepler architecture that powers the GeForce GTX 67/8/90 series, and puts two GPU’s on a single accelerator board to give 4.58 teraflops of single-precision floating point and 320 gigabytes per second memory bandwidth. Impressive stuff! But probably only in the pricing range of oil, gas and defence companies, unfortunately.