Sometimes, owning a smartphone feels pricy. There’s the hefty chunk of change you’ll need to spend on the phone itself, and then the monthly fee you’ll need to fork over to operate it. But for just $400 and the cost of a few old Zack Morris-style brick phones, you can avoid those expenses and build your own damn 1G… Read more…
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It Only Costs $400 to Build Your Own Cell Phone Network
After years of fighting with FOIA requesters, the CIA has finally uploaded over 12 million documents to its website . While many of the documents have been declassified for some time, the pages were intentionally hard to access, and only available on a few computers sitting at the National Archives. But now, anyone can… Read more…
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The CIA Just Dumped 12 Million Declassified Documents Online
We hope you weren’t planning to use your old-school iPhone or BlackBerry Pearl on AT&T’s network for nostalgia’s sake — unfortunately, you’re not going to get anywhere. As promised way back in 2012 , the carrier has confirmed that it shut down 2G services on January 1st, 2017. If your phone only makes GSM calls and uses EDGE for data, you’re stuck. The move won’t hurt very many people (even basic phones have been using 3G and LTE for years), but it’s hard not to shed a little tear for a technology that had been around for so long. As it stands, you probably won’t mind much given what AT&T has in store. It’ll repurpose that newly freed spectrum for LTE, and the move will ultimately create more headroom for 5G wireless . Just as with the end to analog cell service , the small sacrifice you make now will likely pay much larger dividends down the road. The shutdown is also a reminder of just how far mobile data has come since 2G hit the scene (in the US, at the turn of the millennium). EDGE was considered fine at a time when any mobile data was a relative novelty, and the most you did with it was check email or surf the most basic of websites. Now, even a modestly-sized app or photo download would absolutely crush 2G — the modern mobile internet depends on speeds that are orders of magnitude faster. We can only imagine what it’ll be like when 3G bites the dust and LTE is considered the baseline. Via: The Verge Source: AT&T
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AT&T no longer works with your 2G phone
It was not so long ago that sequencing even tiny snippets of DNA was a costly, cumbersome process that required access to a state-the-art lab. Today, we are inching close to putting a DNA sequencer in every pocket . Read more…
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Scientists Can Now Sequence DNA With a Smartphone
The Pi Zero is awesome because it’s so small, but it still requires all kinds of cables and chargers. Over on NODE, they show off how to build the Pi Zero into a USB hub and power supply for an all-in-one computer. Read more…
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Wire a Raspberry Pi Zero Directly Into a Power Supply for a Low-Profile Computer
A major obstacle currently facing VR is the fact that the headsets themselves ( generally ) have to remain tethered to a bulky desktop tower. With the new Zbox Magnus EN1070K from Zotac, however, that tower is now barely bigger than a Mac Mini. The EN1070K is part of Zotac’s gaming line of ultra-compact PCs, but don’t let its miniscule footprint fool you. It offers the current Intel Kaby Lake Core i5 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 GPU and can accommodate up to 32GB of RAM. That’s more than enough processing power to run a VR setup such as the Oculus Rift. There’s no word yet on when the EN1070K will be released, or for how much. Given that the last generation E-series cost around $1, 500, you can pretty safely bet the new one will retail for roughly the same, depending on the specific components you elect for. So even though it may be small enough to fit into a VR backpack , the EN1070K’s price tag may be too big to fit into your budget. Via: The Verge Source: AnandTech
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Zotac’s tiny gaming PC is powerful enough to play in VR
LEDs have dramatically transformed the lighting world over the past few years, thanks to their increased efficiency and life-span over past technologies. But LEDs could see even more upgrades with perovskite particles, a self-assembling nanoscale material that could make them even more efficient and cheaper to produce, Physorg reports . Researchers have already shown how perovskites could improve solar cells, but until now it was difficult to create uniform films made out of the material. “Our new technique allows these nanoparticles to self-assemble to create ultra-fine grained films, an advance in fabrication that makes perovskite LEDs look more like a viable alternative to existing technologies, ” said Barry Rand , an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Princeton and the lead researcher in the findings. Basically, this bodes well for the future of LEDs. It could eventually make it easier to developer LED panels for TVs and monitors, or drive down the cost of LED lighting. Lighting using the new technology are superior in many ways to old-school incandescent bulbs, or even slightly more modern fluorescent bulbs, but they still cost quite a bit more than the older competition. Via: Physorg Source: Nature
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LED lights could get better with self-assembling particles
National parks are great any time of year (yes, even in winter ), but if you don’t want to shell out for the park pass, take advantage of the National Park Service’s fee free days this year. Here are all of them. Read more…
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All the Days You Can Visit National Parks for Free in 2017