iOS: Prompt is an excellent SSH client for iOS, providing you with an elegant interface and several great features (like SSH-specific autocomplete) so using the command line on your iDevice is actually a pleasant experience. More
So what do you do when you want to analyze plasma, that wacky fourth form of matter that possibly powers your beloved HDTV? If you’re at the Novosibirsk Institute of Nuclear Physics, you use this awesomely huge “plasma trap.” More
Square is a great little device for capturing credit card information for quick sales. It is free. However, you can now buy the device for $9.95 in the Apple Store. That’s right – in the mail, free. At the Apple Store, $9.95. The Apple tax is, as they say, alive and well.
To be fair, you do get the convenience of having a ready-to-use device in your hot little hands so like Apple’s foray into selling batteries (remember that?) this is more about customers saying “Eh, I’ll pick it up while I’m here” rather than Apple saying “We are a rapacious company out to screw people.”
UPDATE – Hell hath no fury like an Apple fanboy scorned. I was just schooled by some readers and read “Receive $10 instantly when you activate your Square account” in the product page. So basically Apple is paying YOU 5 cents. Mea culpa.
See the article here:
Apple (Sort Of) Selling Square Reader (Although It’s Free)
An energy efficient Ford F-150 certainly sounds like an oxymoron, but the folks at Protean Electric have proven that even this gas guzzler can go green. So how’d they do it? Well, with in-wheel motors of course. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this technology put to use, but if things go according to plan, Protean’s version of the in-wheel motor could be road ready as soon as next year. The things weigh 68 pounds (31 kilograms) a piece and offer 110 horsepower per wheel. When pared with this F-150 — rocking a custom battery — they offered up 100 mile-per-hour speeds and a range of 100 miles. That might not be enough to take you across the great state of Texas, but it’s certainly sufficient for tooting around the ranch. Head on over to the source link for more on Protean’s in-wheel technology.
Protean Electric in-wheel motors have the stuff to make an F-150 turn green originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Will Foreman used the power of math to beat speeding tickets before three different judges. The tickets were automatically issued by traffic cameras. Foreman used the photographs themselves to raise a reasonable doubt as to the accuracy of the speed sensors.
The camera company, Optotraffic, uses a sensor that detects any vehicle exceeding the speed limit by 12 or more mph, then takes two photos of it for identification purposes. The photos are mailed to violators, along with a $40 ticket.
For each ticket, Mr. Foreman digitally superimposed the two photos – taken 0.363 seconds apart from a stationary point, according to an Optotraffic time stamp – creating a single photo with two images of the vehicle.
Using the vehicle’s length as a frame of reference, Mr. Foreman then measured its distance traveled in the elapsed time, allowing him to calculate the vehicle’s speed. In every case, he said, the vehicle was not traveling fast enough to get a ticket.
So far the judges have agreed.
A representative for the company that installed the cameras (and which receives a portion the fines they generate) said that the vehicles’ speeds are measure before the pictures are taken. Foreman said he doubted the cars slowed that much afterward, since the pictures do not show brakes lights on. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times)
More:
Math vs. Speed Cameras
20 nanometer manufacturing processes, you say? We say pshaw, be gone luddite. Sandisk and Toshiba just announced the latest product from their joint venture: a 19nm 64Gb (8GB) X2 memory chip; aka, the smallest NAND flash memory chip in the world. At least it will be when it hits production in the second half of the year. They are, however, sampling the monolithic chip this quarter in case you’re interested in stacking a batch of 16 into an ultra-high density 128GB SSD. Anyone?
SanDisk and Toshiba announce world’s smallest NAND flash memory chips for tinier gadgets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 03:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Let’s face it, Apple’s computers are gorgeous. Not many manufacturer’s can match them on design, but this new MSI All-in-One looks like it came from the chopping block of Jony Ive’s design desk. More
Minor scratches to things like flooring, gadgets, and cars may soon be a thing of the past, if… wait, no, that lede is a little too PopSci. Let’s try again.
Researchers have come up with a new material that acts like a normal polymer coating under most circumstances, but when exposed to UV light, spontaneously heals nicks and scratches. Here comes the science!
Basically, the material (made of “metallo-supramolecular polymers”) isn’t actually polymeric, but acts like it; instead of long strands of molecules, there are lots of shorter ones, and in most cases they act the same. But the researchers made these sub-polymers sensitive to UV light, essentially “melting” when exposed to it.
When the material melts, it naturally fills in any areas that have been roughed up or scratched, as you can see in the video above. Looks pretty real to me.
Unfortunately, not every coating is right for every situation. This particular one may be too easily disrupted (by heat or friction) to use on, say, your iPhone, and may be too unstable in sunlight to use on cars. But it’s too cool not to use somewhere, so that’s the next problem these guys will have to solve.
The research was a collaboration between Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the University of Fribourg in Germany, and the Army Research Laboratory.
[via Eurekalert]
Read More:
Self-Healing UV-Sensitive Material May Soon Coat Your Devices
The U.S. Postal Service gave an unfair advantage to competitors like Netflix and Blockbuster Video, a regulatory board said Wednesday, awarding game rental service GameFly a victory in a two-year dispute over the postage, breakage and sorting of its disc mailings. More
If you’re contemplating your next car add-on, consider replacing your boring, old spark plugs with lasers. Yeah, lasers. Lasers that cut down on noxious emissions and provide better fuel efficiency! If Japan’s National Institutes of Natural Sciences has its way, a replacement of that sort may not be so far off (or strange). More