Watch an all-electric Bigfoot monster truck crush cars… quietly (video)

We're used to a lot of sturm und drang when monster trucks come out to play, so it's almost a shock when we don't get any -- and that's what both Ford and EnerSys pulled off earlier this fall. By outfitting Bigfoot 20 with 36 of EnerSys' batteries as well as a 350HP electric motor, the duo has developed what's claimed to be the first proper EV monster truck. The resulting prototype is defined more by what you don't hear than what you do, as you'll see in the video after the break; despite its giant wheels, Bigfoot is so quiet that the cars being crushed are louder. Our childhood selves would be heartbroken at the lack of vroom-vroom sounds, but we'll admit to wanting the all-electric process to go beyond parades and reach live monster truck shows -- if it preserves the planet, our hearing and a weekend tradition at the same time, we can't object. Continue reading Watch an all-electric Bigfoot monster truck crush cars... quietly (video) Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Autoblog Source: Bigfoot 4x4

Virus Rebuilds Heart’s Own Pacemaker In Animal Tests

hugheseyau writes "A new pacemaker has been built inside a heart by converting beating muscle into cells which can organise the organ's rhythm, U.S. researchers report. Scientists injected a genetically-modified virus into guinea pigs to turn part of their heart into a new, working pacemaker." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dell Gives Android the Boot, Boots Up More Windows 8

hugheseyau writes "Dell vice chairman Jeff Clarke made a less than shocking announcement at this year's Dell World Conference in Austin. The company is officially giving up on Android phones and tablets. ... So if Dell is giving up on Android, what comes next? The company claims its doubling down on Windows 8, and the enterprise market." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anonymous sets sights on an old enemy—the Westboro Baptist Church

That link? It leads to a survey entitled, "Interactive Butthurt Report v. 2.0." Nothing is beneath the Westboro Baptist Church, as evidenced by the group's announcement to picket outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in wake of the recent tragedy. The group's most recent, perhaps most deplorable decision has apparently irked one of its oldest enemies : infamous hacker collective Anonymous. In response to the WBC's plans early today, Anonymous tweeted , "It's so nice of #WBC to provide the internet with a list of their twitter handles..." Roughly one hour later, they revealed their plans for the WBC : "#WBC GodHatesFags Site Admin gets #DOX'd via: Anonymous." DOX, of course, refers to the work Anonymous did to find and publish a list of WBC members complete with e-mails, phone numbers, and even home addresses—all for the adoring public to access. In addition to the DOXing, Anonymous has repeatedly promoted a whitehouse.org petition to have the WBC recognized legally as a hate-group . The petition was created on Friday and it has already doubled the required 25,000 signatures. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Huge Security Hole In Recent Samsung Devices

An anonymous reader writes "A huge security hole has been discovered in recent Samsung devices including phones like the Galaxy S2 and S3. It is possible for every user to obtain root due to a custom faulty memory device created by Samsung." The problem affects phones with the Exynos System-on-Chip. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Using Windows 8’s “hidden” backup to clone and recover your whole PC

The blue screen of bringing your PC back to life. When it comes to backing up and restoring your PC, Windows 8 took a few steps forward and a few steps back. Your settings and apps in the new tablet-y interface (yeah, we're still calling it Metro ) are automatically backed up if you use a Microsoft account. That means when you restore your PC, all of the Metro stuff comes back exactly the way you remember it. This has limitations—your desktop applications, anything that wasn't downloaded from the Windows Store, are wiped when performing the most easily accessible type of restore in Windows 8. Beyond Metro, all you get is a file on your desktop listing the applications you've lost. There's also a new backup tool on the desktop side of things, but this has its limits too. Called File History, it lets you automatically back up files to a network drive or cable-connected external hard drive every 10 minutes. As Peter Bright explained in an article last summer, File History's arrival was paired with the exit of Shadow Copies. This was a useful tool that let users revert to previous versions of files without needing to connect an external drive, and now it's gone. Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Bunnie Huang is building a laptop

Virtuoso hardware hacker Bunnie Huang is building an open hardware laptop. Want. We started the design in June, and last week I got my first prototype motherboards, hot off the SMT line. It’s booting linux, and I’m currently grinding through the validation of all the sub-components. I thought I’d share the design progress with my readers. Of course, a feature of a build-it-yourself laptop is that all the design documentation is open, so others of sufficient skill and resources can also build it. The hardware and its sub-components are picked so as to make this the most practically open hardware laptop I could create using state of the art technology. You can download, without NDA, the datasheets for all the components, and key peripheral options are available so it’s possible to build a complete firmware from source with no opaque blobs. Building my Own Laptop

Rare Guinea Pig Hybrid Breeds

Behold the mighty guinea lion, a savage beast that kills with the power of cuteness. Adventurous animal lovers will discover many more examples of guinea pig-animal hybridization at the link below, but don't let their adorability fool you- these cuties are packing a mean set of chompers! Link

Linux to drop i386 support in the 3.8 kernel, make us upgrade our Doom...

Linux has developed a reputation for running on just about anything . If proposed changes to the 3.8 kernel take effect, we'll have to add an "almost" disclaimer. The OS' maintainers expect to drop support for Intel's i386 architecture with the new release, noting that there's "quite a bit of complexity" that could be lifted by swinging the focus to (much) newer chips. Don't expect Torvalds to have much nostalgia for i386 despite basing much of his early work on it, either, as he's bidding "good riddance" to the legacy code. We can't blame the Linux collective for wanting to drop support for 27-year-old silicon that's well out of fashion, even in embedded components; you'll just have to forgive us if we shed a tear for that retro gaming PC which finally fell off the update bandwagon. [Image credit: Konstantin Lanzet, Wikipedia ] Filed under: Software Comments Via: ZDNet , Extremetech Source: Kernel.org , Gmane.org

Google phasing out ActiveSync push mail for free customers

Calling it "Winter cleaning," Google has announced that from January 30, 2013, users of Google Mail, Calendar, and Contacts will no longer receive Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) support on their accounts. EAS provides push mail and synchronization of contacts and calendars to a number of mobile platforms, including iOS, Symbian, and Windows Phone. It's also one of the protocols that Windows 8's Metro Mail app uses, as does Outlook 2013. Currently, users of Google's services can enable EAS support to use their Google accounts with suitable devices. After the cut off, existing users will continue to be able to use EAS with their devices, but those users won't be able to add new devices. All future devices will have to use IMAP for their mail, CalDAV for calendar sync, and CardDAV for contact sync. Android and iOS users can use these protocols, but many others will be left high and dry. Push mail, in particular, could be left behind, as many platforms (including iOS) don't support the IMAP IDLE push mail feature. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments