Low water pressure sucks. You hop in expecting a wonderful deluge, but you get a pathetic drizzle. It can be a day-breaker. But the good news is, you’re not helpless. More
How Do You Boost Weak Water Pressure? [Home Mod]
Day: May 9, 2011
iFixit Tears Apart A FBI GPS Tracking Device — Really
Ever wonder what sort of space age technology the FBI tracks people with? Well, as iFixit found during a special teardown, space age sort of properly describes the equipment if the term space age refers to 1990-ish equipment. I won’t spoil all the fun (like the 20 year battery life) partly because I wanna get this story posted quickly and go give my car a thorough pat down for any such device.
See original article:
iFixit Tears Apart A FBI GPS Tracking Device — Really
GameCube Fusion portable brings Wii aesthetics, GBA design to Nintendo’s boxiest console (video)
It seems like there was a time, not that long ago, where we saw another new hand-crafted portable console every week, each one smaller and more impressive than those before. Those days are, sadly, gone and, whether you want to blame the short attention span of today’s youth or simply conclude that everyone’s too busy playing Angry Birds, it’s a sad fact. Modder Ashen is bucking the trend, creating what he calls the GameCube Fusion. It’s a hand-built portable GameCube that plays (hopefully legally acquired) titles from SD card via both WiiKey and Gecko, offering full controls on-board plus an external controller port, all kept cool by a laptop-sourced fan that sounds powerful enough to make the thing hover, F-Zero-style. It’s far smaller than 2009’s NCube, but the omission of a battery pack means it won’t be traveling far. For those who want to know more, every detail will be revealed in the 12 minute video embedded just below — if you can keep focused that long.
GameCube Fusion portable brings Wii aesthetics, GBA design to Nintendo’s boxiest console (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 May 2011 09:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
NVIDIA acquiring wireless chip manufacturer Icera, doubling-down on the post-PC era
NVIDIA, a company once focused entirely on giant graphics cards for home computers, has already quite successfully re-positioned itself as a player in the mobile graphics world. Now it’s poised to really shake things up, announcing the acquisition of Icera. The UK-based company you’ve probably never heard of has a line of on 3G and 4G baseband processors used in wireless devices and USB modems — chips that are said to be smaller, more flexible, and more efficient than the competition from Qualcomm and ST-Ericsson. Icera seems to have been focused heavily on LTE of late, which puts NVIDIA in a good place to not only manage what happens to the data when its inside your next-gen phone or tablet, but to also control just how it gets there in the first place. A future Tegra SoC that handles wireless data too? Color us intrigued.
Continue reading NVIDIA acquiring wireless chip manufacturer Icera, doubling-down on the post-PC era
NVIDIA acquiring wireless chip manufacturer Icera, doubling-down on the post-PC era originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 May 2011 10:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Windows Phone 7 Mango Update Even Tastier than We Expected [Windows Phone 7]
As you know, we want WP7 to be good. Really, really good—because it's got the potential to be really great. Leaked details reveal that WP7’s next step (codenamed “Mango”) will be a sweet, delicious bite of update fruit. More
‘Miraculous’ Aeros airship set to fly by 2013, thanks to DOD funding
Are you nostalgic for a time when the word “zeppelin” stood for leisurely intercontinental travel for the rich and famous, rather than bass-heavy portable sound and MotoBlur phones? Take heart, as Ukrainian entrepreneur Igor Pasternak claims to have solved the “buoyancy problem” that has long limited the usefulness of airships. The problem is that burning fuel or dropping cargo lightens the ship, which then needs to vent costly helium to return to earth; without a way to control buoyancy, take-offs and landings become complicated to the point of uselessness. Pasternak claims to have solved this sticking point by compressing the pricey gas, thereby conserving it for later use. The Defense Department (which loves its warblimps) has contracted his company, Aeros, to provide a working demonstration by 2012-13. Dubbed Pelican, it will only fly without a payload at first — but if the technology proves feasible, we might just see a new Era of Airships.
‘Miraculous’ Aeros airship set to fly by 2013, thanks to DOD funding originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 May 2011 05:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Windows Phone 7 Update Even Better than We Expected [Windows Phone 7]
As you know, we want WP7 to be good. Really, really good—because it's got the potential to be really great. Leaked details reveal that WP7’s next step (codenamed “Mango”) will be a sweet, delicious bite of update fruit. More
Hillary Clinton Photoshopped Out of Situation Room Photo [Wtf]
Ultra Orthodox Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung is telling its readers like it isn’t- by editing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from the now-iconic Bin Laden raid Situation Room photo. Oy vey. More
The PSN Outage Should Last Until May 31st
Sony is performing the old salt-in-the-wound trick by informing Bloomberg that the PSN/Quoricity outage should last another 22 days with an expected return date of May 31. This came from an interview with a Sony spokesman in a Bloomberg interview. Security is the key here. Sony is adopting new techniques and practices to beef up its online services and apparently that takes some time.
Luckily online gaming was never a core tenet of the Playstation Network or people would be really upset. In related news, co-op mode on Portal 2 is really cool.
See the original post:
The PSN Outage Should Last Until May 31st
Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S.
The percentage of households in the United States that have TVs dropped from 98.9% to 96.7%. Why would you think that happened? Where I live, high-speed internet access costs $40 a month, whereas a decent slate of TV channels on cable costs $70. If you own a computer, the choice is a no-brainer. According to the New York Times:
There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.
The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the Internet.
I had forgotten that there are places in which people can pick up several TV channels by using just an antenna. If I lived alone, I would give up TV entirely because I don’t have time to watch it. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
View post:
Ownership of TV Sets Falls in U.S.