Month: November 2012

MOOC Mania

theodp writes “Online education has had a fifty-year road to ‘overnight’ success. MIT Technology Review calls the emergence of free online education, particularly massive open online courses (MOOCs), The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years. ‘If you were asked to name the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years,’ writes Antonio Regalado, ‘you might say the combustion engine, air travel, Henry Ford’s Model-T production line, or even the bicycle. The list goes on. Now answer this one: what’s been the single biggest innovation in education? Don’t worry if you come up blank. You’re supposed to.’ Writing about MOOC Mania in the Communications of the ACM, Moshe Y. Vardi worries that ‘the enormous buzz about MOOCs is not due to the technology’s intrinsic educational value, but due to the seductive possibilities of lower costs.’ And in MOOCs Will Eat Academia, Vivek Haldar writes, ‘MOOCs will almost certainly hollow out the teaching component of universities as it stands today…But all is not lost, because the other thing universities do is research, and that is arguably as important, if not more, than teaching.’ So, are MOOCs the best thing since sliced bread, or merely the second coming of 1920s Postal Course Mania?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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MOOC Mania

Heartbeat-Powered Pacemaker

The idea proposed by reseachers at the University of Michigan is to harvest the energy released by a heartbeat to power the pacemaker regulating the same heart: Piezoelectric materials generate an electric charge when their shape is changed. They are used in some microphones to convert vibrations into an electrical signal. Researchers at the University of Michigan are trying to use the movement of the heart as a source of electricity. In tests designed to simulate a range of heartbeats, enough electricity was generated to power a pacemaker. The designers now want to test the device on a real heart and build it into a commercial pacemaker. Link -via Glenn Reynolds  | Photo: Heart Pencil Holder on sale at the NeatoShop

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Heartbeat-Powered Pacemaker

Intel’s NUC mini-PC internals exposed, available for around $300 in early December

Intel’s Next Unit of Computing (NUC) is just about ready for store shelves, and Anandtech managed to get their hands on the DC3217BY model to provide us an early inside look at the mini-PC. Clearly aimed at enthusiasts, the motherboard and 4 x 4-inch chassis are all you get out of the box; you’ll have to get the memory, the mini PCIe cards and even the power cord separately. Luckily installation looks quite easy — only four screws hold the chassis and motherboard together. The bottom mini PCIe slot accommodates half height cards (for WiFi, presumably) and you can go ahead and put an mSATA drive or full height card at the top. As we saw in our IDF hands-on , the NUC holds a Core i3 CPU, HD 4000 graphics, two SoDIMM sockets, mSATA and mini-PCIe interfaces, one to two HDMI and three USB 2.0 connectors. The DC3217BY eschews Gigabit Ethernet (which is available on the DC3217IYE) in favor of a Thunderbolt port. While we initially thought the NUC would go for somewhere around $400 , it turns out it’ll cost $300 to $320 and will be available from Amazon and Eggdrop in early December. If you’re considering getting one for yourself, we recommend taking a peek at the source to get a more intimate look. Filed under: Desktops , Misc , Intel Intel’s NUC mini-PC internals exposed, available for around $300 in early December originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Nov 2012 04:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink    |  Anandtech  |  Email this  |  Comments

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Intel’s NUC mini-PC internals exposed, available for around $300 in early December

The Edible Deodorant

Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker, but edible deodorant doesn’t only taste sweet, it also makes you smell like roses! Here’s Deo Perfume Candy, the brainchild of food company Beneo : This form of nutricosmetics (nutritional supplements which can support the function and the structure of the skin) is down to the ingredient geraniol, an acrylic monoterpene-alcohol, which is a colourless liquid that can be found in plants such as rose, lavender and vanilla. Geraniol is a natural antioxidant and its fragrance, once consumed as a candy, leaves the body through its pores, creating a naturally sweet smell that can last for hours. Oddity Central has the story: Link (Photo: New Hope 360 )

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The Edible Deodorant

Hiren’s BootCD 15.2

Avira AntiVir Personal (18-10-2012): Free anti-virus and anti-spyware on-demand scanner, detects and removes more than 50000 viruses and trojans (Windows Freeware). ClamWin Free Antivirus 0.97.6 (18-10-2012): A free antivirus, GNU GPL Open Source Virus Scanner (Windows Freeware). ComboFix (18-10-2012): Designed to cleanup malware infections and restore settings modified by

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Hiren’s BootCD 15.2

Best of both worlds: Setting up Wi-Fi for iOS on 2.4 and 5GHz

For a while, it seemed that Wi-Fi was becoming a victim of its own success. In many cities, there are numerous active Wi-Fi networks on those preciously few non-overlapping channels—that’s in addition to microwaves, bluetooth, cordless phones, and baby monitors, which all share the 2.4GHz band. But since about 2007, Apple has also built support for 802.11n Wi-Fi on the 5GHz band into its computers and Airport line of Wi-Fi base stations. Now, the iPhone 5 and the latest iPod touch also have that support. (The iPad has had it since day one.) So, how do you set up a Wi-Fi network that makes the most of this confluence of Wi-Fi bands? Not created equal First of all, it’s important to realize that the two bands are created very differently. The 2.4GHz band suffers from lack of non-overlapping channels and interference from other devices. But the lower frequencies pass through walls and floors reasonably well. The 5GHz band on the other hand, has a much larger number of channels—and they don’t overlap—but the higher frequencies have reduced range, even in open air. In addition to this, Apple only supports using two channels as a single, double-speed wide channel in the 5GHz band. If all else is equal, 5GHz is twice as fast as 2.4GHz. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Best of both worlds: Setting up Wi-Fi for iOS on 2.4 and 5GHz

Don’t Call It a Dump Truck: This Massive Mineral Hauler Transforms Into an Overland Train

When massive, open-pit mines like the Minera Escondida —in Chile’s Atacama Desert—need to pull millions of tons of minerals out of the ground each year, they rely on fleets of huge, “Ultra-Class” haul trucks. The ETF Haul Train, however, pulls four times the minerals of these stone-toting behemoths with just one driver. More »

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Don’t Call It a Dump Truck: This Massive Mineral Hauler Transforms Into an Overland Train

EFF delivers easy full-disk encryption for Ubuntu

Douglas sez, 18 months ago Boing Boing posted about EFF’s effort to get Ubuntu to make full disk encryption (FDE) easy upon install. EFF has delivered. I’m sure many of us have had and continue to have the experience of trying to nudge someone (or ourselves) over from OS X or Windows to GNU/Linux and LUKS full disk encryption, but the process got roadblocked at some point because using the alternate installer to config the partitions and all for FDE was just too much of a hassle for parties involved. Now in Ubuntu 12.10, FDE is just a tickbox in the default installer. How cool is that? This means it’s a good time to donate to EFF . And if you’re using Ubuntu 12.10, don’t forget to fix the privacy problems for which EFF provides a tutorial (thanks again!). ( Thanks, Doug ! )

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EFF delivers easy full-disk encryption for Ubuntu

Microsoft Can Convert Your Voice Into Another Language

It’s unlikely that you speak Mandarin, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need to at some point. Now, Microsoft has created software that can analyze your speech, translate it and then spit out a new recording of your very own voice speaking in a different language. More »

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Microsoft Can Convert Your Voice Into Another Language