Author: kenmay

Google Fiber is launching in Salt Lake City

You no longer have to head to Provo if you want Google Fiber in Utah — Google has revealed that it’s bringing its gigabit internet access to the state’s capital, Salt Lake City. The company is short on details, but it won’t have a ready-made fiber network to use this time around. SLC’s fiber network is still in the design phase, much like those in Atlanta, Nashville and North Carolina , so you could be waiting a while before you have a chance to sign up. Nonetheless, this is a good sign. Even if you don’t live in the area, it suggests that Google is picking up the pace on its once-cautious Fiber rollouts and is more likely to bring extra-fast data to your city. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Networking , Internet , HD , Google Comments Source: Google Fiber Blog

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Google Fiber is launching in Salt Lake City

Obama To Announce $240M In New Pledges For STEM Education

An anonymous reader sends word that President Obama is expected to announce more that $240 million in pledges to boost STEM educations at the White House Science Fair today. “President Barack Obama is highlighting private-sector efforts to encourage more students from underrepresented groups to pursue education in science, technology, engineering and math. At the White House Science Fair on Monday, Obama will announce more than $240 million in pledges to boost the study of those fields, known as STEM. This year’s fair is focused on diversity. Obama will say the new commitments have brought total financial and material support for these programs to $1 billion. The pledges the president is announcing include a $150 million philanthropic effort to encourage promising early-career scientists to stay on track and a $90 million campaign to expand STEM opportunities to underrepresented youth, such as minorities and girls.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Obama To Announce $240M In New Pledges For STEM Education

Cyanogen Grabs Another $80 Million In Funding

 Everyone’s favorite version of “open” Android is putting in its big business pants. The company just, which recently announced a partnership with Qualcomm has raised $80 million in funding from various providers, a hefty sum for a company that started out as a community driven mobile OS. Investors included Premji Invest, Twitter Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated, Telefónica… Read More

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Cyanogen Grabs Another $80 Million In Funding

The First Billion-Pixel Mosaic of Mars

StartsWithABang writes In 2012, Mars Science Laboratory performed the first robotically-controlled soft landing of a vehicle of such incredible mass: nearly half a tonne. A few months later, the rover, Curiosity, took the first ever billion-pixel mosaic from the Red Planet’s surface, with breathtaking views of the terrain and alternate views of what the soils would look like were they here on Earth. Now in its third year on Mars, Curiosity is roving the low slopes of its ultimate destination: Mount Sharp. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The First Billion-Pixel Mosaic of Mars

Boeing Patents Star Wars Style Force Field Technology

An anonymous reader was one of many to point out that Boeing doesn’t want to rely on a sad devotion to an ancient religion to protect aircraft and conjure up the stolen data tapes, but plans on using force fields instead. “Boeing’s new patent may let the force be with you even in real life. The aircraft and defense company has taken a cue from science fiction with its plan to develop a Star Wars style force field that would use energy to deflect any potential damage. Just liking the luminescent shields seen in the film, Boeing’s “Method and system for shock wave attenuation via electromagnetic arc” could provide a real-life layer of protection from nearby impacts to targets. The downside: It won’t protect from direct hits.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Boeing Patents Star Wars Style Force Field Technology

Big solar plants produced 5% of California’s electricity last year

Today, the US Energy Information Agency announced that California had passed a key milestone, becoming the first state to produce five percent of its annual electricity using utility-scale solar power. This represents more than a doubling from the 2013 level, when 1.9 percent of the state’s power came from utility-scale solar, and means that California produces more electricity from this approach than all of the remaining states combined. The growth in California was largely fueled by the opening of two 550MW capacity photovoltaic plants, along with two large solar-thermal plants. In total, the state added nearly two GigaWatts of capacity last year alone. The growth is driven in part by a renewable energy standard that will see the state generate 33 percent of its electricity from non-hydro renewables by 2020; it was at 22 percent in 2014. Other states with renewable standards—Nevada, Arizona, New Jersey, and North Carolina—rounded out the top five. Both Nevada and Arizona obtained 2.8 percent of their electricity from solar; all other states were at one percent or less. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Big solar plants produced 5% of California’s electricity last year

First Prototype of a Working Tricorder Unveiled At SXSW

the_newsbeagle writes The $10 million Tricorder X-prize is getting to the “put up or shut up” stage: The 10 finalists must turn in their working devices on June 1st for consumer testing. At SXSW last week, the finalist team Cloud DX showed off its prototype, which includes a wearable collar, a base station, a blood-testing stick, and a scanning wand. From the article: “The XPrize is partnering with the medical center at the University of California, San Diego on that consumer testing, since it requires recruiting more than 400 people with a variety of medical conditions. Grant Campany, director of the Tricorder XPrize, said he’s looking forward to getting those devices into real patients hands. ‘This will be a practical demonstration of what the future of medicine will be like, ‘ said Campany at that same SXSW talk, ‘so we can scale it up after competition.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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First Prototype of a Working Tricorder Unveiled At SXSW

Bring On the Boring Robots

malachiorion writes: After a successful 6-month pilot, Savioke’s ‘butler bots’ are heading to hotels around the country. These are not sexy, scary, or even technically impressive machines. But they were useful enough, over the course of their 2, 000 or so deliveries, to warrant a redesign, and a larger deployment starting in April. Savioke’s CEO had some interesting things to say about the pilot, including the fact that some 95 percent of guests gave the robot a 5-star review, and only the drunks seemed to take issue with it. Plus, as you might expect, everyone seemed to want to take a damn selfie with it. But as small as the stakes might appear, highly specialized bots like this one, which can only do one thing (in this case, bring up to 10 pounds of stuff from the lobby to someone’s door) are a better glimpse of our future than any talk of hyper-competent humanoids or similarly versatile machines. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bring On the Boring Robots

This $300 cybernetic arm gets its smarts from your cellphone

Iron Man isn’t the only one 3D-printing artificial limbs these days. But unlike the mechanical hand delivered by Robert Downey Jr, this recently unveiled prosthetic from Japanese manufacturer Exiii costs just $300 and leverages your mobile device’s computing power to act just like the real thing. The Ghost in the Shell future we’ve between waiting for came took a step closer to reality. The Handiii bionic limb’s exterior is completely 3D-printed. This not only keeps each unit’s initial production costs low (it’s already dropped $50 since we last saw it at Maker Faire Tokyo ), the technique also makes fabricating replacement parts faster and easier as well. But despite its bargain-basement price, the Handiii is packed with electronics. An EMG sensor detects electrical impulses emanating from the user’s remaining limb stump and converts those impulses into physical movement through a series of servos. What’s more, it connects wirelessly to your cell phone or tablet using the mobile device’s CPU to interpret these signals and initiate movement. Unfortunately, there’s already a waiting list for these handy devices, partly due to a backlog of existing orders. Its creators are also focusing on getting these arms into the hands of academic and industrial researchers — potentially as an open-source platform — before beginning deliveries to the general public. Filed under: Wearables , Science Comments Via: TechCrunch Source: Exiii.jp

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This $300 cybernetic arm gets its smarts from your cellphone