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U.S. Navy Receives First Industry Built Railgun Prototype

Zothecula writes “Two years after BAE Systems was awarded a US$21 million contract from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to develop an advanced Electromagnetic Railgun for the U.S. Navy, the company has delivered the first industry-built prototype demonstrator to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren. The prototype launcher is now being prepared for testing which is scheduled to take place in the coming weeks.”

Arkitypo: A 3D History of Typography

London-based Johnson Banks is an identity and branding company that delves into print and even 3D work on occasion. Their latest 3D experiment resulted in Arkitypo, a 3D alphabet that tells the history of typography. “Each letterform is different, each in turn interprets its own alphabet.” For example, “A” is for Aksidenz Grotesk, a forerunner of Helvetica. It was “part of a family of early sans-serifs called ‘grotesques’…for this design a condensed weight is ‘fractalized,’ turning a grotesque into a thing of beauty.”

Each letter is methodically researched and many of the resulting forms are quite beautiful. Take the “B,” an uppercase Bodoni B spiraling out of the form of a Baskerville B like a snail shell. “Baskerville and Bodoni are usually judged as two separate typefaces, but Giambattista Bodoni modeled his famous font on John Baskerville’s…The key difference is that the thicks and thins are in turn thicker, and thinner.”

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Arkitypo: A 3D History of Typography

The Miraculous NASA Breakthrough That Could Save Millions of Lives [Video]

Click here to read The Miraculous NASA Breakthrough That Could Save Millions of Lives

There are no hospitals in space. The closest E.R. is back on Earth, and astronauts can’t exactly jump in a cab to get there. So what happens if the sun burps out a massive blast of radiation while an astronaut is space-amblin’ by? More »

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The Miraculous NASA Breakthrough That Could Save Millions of Lives [Video]

Gather These Twenty-Five Documents You Need Before You Die [Life Planning]

Click here to read Gather These Twenty-Five Documents You Need Before You Die

Do your loved ones a favor and organize these important documents so in case something happens to you they can easily make financial decisions and act on your behalf. The Wall Street Journal explains which policies and documents to make accessible. More »

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Gather These Twenty-Five Documents You Need Before You Die [Life Planning]

The Pros and Cons of Social Media in Education

New Technique Promises Much Faster Hard Drive Write Speeds

MrSeb writes “Hold onto your hats: Scientists at the University of York, England have completely rewritten the rules of magnetic storage (abstract; full paper paywalled). Instead of switching a magnetic region using a magnetic field (like a hard drive head), the researchers have managed to switch a ferrimagnetic nanoisland using a 60-femtosecond laser. Storing magnetic data using lasers is up to 1,000 times faster than writing to a conventional hard drive (we’re talking about gigabytes or terabytes per second) — and the ferrimagnetic nanoislands that store the data are capable of storage densities that are some 15 times greater than existing hard drive platters. Unfortunately the York scientists only detailed writing data with lasers; there’s no word on how to read it.”

Amazon Prime Now Has a lot More TV Shows Thanks to Viacom [Amazon Prime]

Click here to read Amazon Prime Now Has a lot More TV Shows Thanks to Viacom

Like Netflix and Hulu before it, Amazon has inked a deal with Viacom to bring TV shows from all its networks (MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, BET, Spike, etc.) to the Prime streaming service. Beavis and Butthead marathon, anyone? More »

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Amazon Prime Now Has a lot More TV Shows Thanks to Viacom [Amazon Prime]

HDD Price Update: How the Thai Floods Have Affected Prices, 3 Months Later

New submitter jjslash writes “The hard disk drive supply chain was hit hard late last year when a series of floods struck Thailand. The Asian country accounts for about a quarter of the world’s hard drive production, but thousands of factories had to close shop for weeks as facilities were under water, in what is considered the world’s fourth costliest natural disaster according to World Bank estimates. That’s on top of the human cost of over 800 lives. TechSpot has monitored a number of mobile and desktop HDDs to get a better overview of how the situation has developed in the last three months.”

Logitech Touch Mouse M600 mouse lets you swipe and scroll sans buttons for $69

Is your current wireless mouse not up to snuff? If that’s the case, you may want to take a gander at the Logitech Touch Mouse M600 that lets you do your navigating via a touch surface instead of those ol’ clicky buttons. The peripheral is outfitted with the company’s Flow Scroll software that touts a similar feel to scrolling on your touchscreen smartphone of choice. From wherever your fingers contact the top of the mouse, you can scroll and swipe in order to keep powering through those Photoshop files. The M600 works just as well for lefties once click areas are reconfigured with Logitech’s SetPoint software. If you’re thinking about taking the leap, look at the details in the PR below and get ready to shell out $69.99 later this month.

Continue reading Logitech Touch Mouse M600 mouse lets you swipe and scroll sans buttons for $69

Logitech Touch Mouse M600 mouse lets you swipe and scroll sans buttons for $69 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Logitech Touch Mouse M600 mouse lets you swipe and scroll sans buttons for $69