With so many things intentionally built so you cannot easily open them up and monkey with the innards, it’s refreshing to see the design of HP’s new Z1 workstation: The machine easily flips into a horizontal position for servicing, and the screen pops up as easy as a car hood. Even better, it’s been designed for completely tool-less adjustments—you can swap everything in and out with your bare fingers, so you don’t need one of those micro screwdriver sets with bits shaped like all of the individual Lucky Charms.

The attendant video is one of those that’s been branded a “Making of” but is in fact more commercial-y, though it’s worth watching to hear some of the inspirations and thinking behind the design:

(more…)

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HP’s Z1 Workstation: Designed So You Can Mess With It

When it comes to streaming music services are you something of an agnostic? That’s not necessarily a bad thing — Spotify, Rdio, MOG, Grooveshark, etc… all have their strengths and weaknesses (Spotify, for example, is a great source for Norwegian black metal). The trouble is, it’s neither fun nor easy to jump from app to app, web site to web site just to find what you’re looking for. Music Smasher simplifies things by letting you search most of the big sources in online streaming tunes simultaneously. It trolls the four services mentioned earlier, as well as SoundCloud and Bandcamp. Well, it searches Grooveshark in theory, but every query we tried simply returned undefined results. Hit up the source to try it out for yourself.

Music Smasher searches Spotify, Rdio, MOG and more in one shot originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Music Smasher searches Spotify, Rdio, MOG and more in one shot

The 70,000 daily visitors to popular music site RnBXclusive.com were met with a purposely terrifying message on Tuesday and part of Wednesday. The UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) took the site down, arrested its operator, and threw up a splash page that warned downloaders of “up to 10 years imprisonment.” Thought statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement in the US were ludicrous? SOCA warns that downloaders from the site could face an “unlimited fine under UK law.”

SOCA also showed users their own IP address and warned that “the above information can be used to identify you and your location,” adding that “SOCA has the capability to monitor and investigate you, and can inform your Internet service provider of these infringements.”

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Police: download a file, go to jail for 10 years and pay an “unlimited” fine

kkleiner writes “A group of 15 patients suffering from either epileptic seizures or brain tumors volunteered to allow scientists to insert electrodes into their brains. After neurosurgeons cut a hole in their skulls, the research team placed 256 electrodes over the part of the brain that processes auditory signals called the temporal lobe. The scientists then played words, one at a time, to the patients while recording brain activity in the temporal lobe. A computer was able to reconstruct the original word 80 to 90 percent of the time.”

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Brain Implants Can Detect What Patients Hear

Yesterday, the Canadian Conservative government introduced a “minor” change to its sweeping domestic spying bill. Instead of being called the “Lawful Access Act” it is now called the “Protecting Children From Internet Predators Act.” (Thanks, Robbo!)

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Orwell would be proud of Canada’s Tories

garyebickford writes ” As The ETH Lausanne says: ‘The proliferation of debris orbiting the Earth – primarily jettisoned rocket and satellite components – is an increasingly pressing problem for spacecraft, and it can generate huge costs. To combat this scourge, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is announcing today the launch of CleanSpace One, a project to develop and build the first installment of a family of satellites specially designed to clean up space debris.’ This looks like a reasonable method, although I think that at some future point it might be useful to just put at least the smaller stuff in a higher ‘parking orbit’ for later destruction or recycling. This way you wouldn’t lose one vacuum cleaner for each satellite retrieved. And much later down the road, it might be useful to collect bigger units — expended boosters, for example — as raw materials and/or containers. The cost of getting the mass into space has already been spent.
I optimistically foresee a future where much of the stuff sent into orbital space has a recycling function built into the design.”

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Swiss To Build Orbital Cleaning Satellite

Apple’s asked the Chinese Amazon store to stop selling iPads because of its not-going-so-well legal mess with Proview Technology. Proview’s also trying to get all imports and exports of the iPad banned. So if neither side wants iPads sold in China, why are they still on shelves? Local customs officials, of course, who have responded to this whole thing with a laugh and a good hair ruffling. More »

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Apple Pulled iPads from Amazon China, But Won’t Face Total Ban (Yet) [Apple]

Aereo is a new broadcast TV provider launching in New York that makes TV watching a lot more convenient. You don’t have a cable box, you don’t have an antenna, you don’t have ridiculous fees. Instead, Aereo handles all the fuss for you. How? More »

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Would You Ditch Cable If You Could Still Watch TV Anywhere You Want and Anytime You Like? [TV]

Takanori Aiba’s bonsai and epoxy fancies are beautiful, gnarly fairylands, full of whimsy and perfectly weird.

(Image: “Bonsai-B” and “Hôtel de Michelin” by TAKANORI AIBA, copyright TOKYO GOOD IDEA Development Institute Co, Ltd, used with permission)

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Bonsai fairylands of Takanori Aiba

LG’s got a leak and it’s revealing some intriguing details on another flagship smartphone — even backing them up with some screenshots. According to MoDaCo‘s mole, it will brandish a 4.7 inch (720 x 1280) display, powered by LG’s first Tegra 3 quad-core setup. Processor speeds for the LG X3 are pegged at around 1.5GHz on a single core, dropping to 1.4GHz during multi-core use. Hopefully, the 2,000mAh battery will withstand all that thinking power, while Ice Cream Sandwich should help push those multitasking chops to its limit. Camera-wise, you can expect an increasingly standard eight-megapixel sensor, with a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front. There also appears to be some NFC hardware inside, identified by that circular logo at the top of these tantalizing screengrabs — something we saw on LG’s Prada phone 3.0. We’re hoping to get a full explanation (and a look at some hardware) at Mobile World Congress. There’s just a few weeks to go.

LG’s Tegra 3 phone specifications leak, benchmark tests cower in fear originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG’s Tegra 3 phone specifications leak, benchmark tests cower in fear