A few years ago, Ikea announced it had designed a better refugee shelter, using its flatpack furniture as a basis for engineering. As great an idea as it was, it wasn’t clear how the concept would ever find its way to reality. Now, these Ikea refugee shelters will be deployed— by the thousands . Read more…
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The UN Just Ordered 10,000 of Ikea’s Brilliant Flatpack Refugee Shelters
Watch out Dropbox, Amazon’s coming at you with a new cloud storage plan that’s ridiculously cheap. You can now store an unlimited number of files in the cloud for $60 a year. That’s five bucks a month for everything. Read more…
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Amazon’s New Unlimited Cloud Storage Plan Is Dirt Cheap
angry tapir writes: Researchers at Stanford University have come up with a new way to make chips and solar panels using gallium arsenide, a semiconductor that beats silicon in several important areas but is typically too expensive for widespread use. “[I]t can cost about $5, 000 to make a wafer of gallium arsenide 8 inches in diameter, versus $5 for a silicon wafer, according to Aneesh Nainani, who teaches semiconductor manufacturing at Stanford. The new Stanford process (abstract) seeks to lessen this thousand-to-one cost differential by reusing that $5, 000 wafer. Today the working electronic circuits in a gallium arsenide device are grown on top of this wafer. Manufacturers make this circuitry layer by flowing gaseous gallium arsenide and other materials across the wafer surface. This material condenses into thin layer of circuitry atop the wafer. In this scenario, the wafer is only a backing. The thin layer of circuitry on top of this costly platter contains all of the electronics.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Stanford Breakthrough Could Make Better Chips Cheaper
rDouglass writes: MuseScore, the open source desktop application for music notation, has released version 2.0 for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. This release represents the culmination of four years of development, including technical contributions from over 400 people. In addition to a completely new UI, top features include linked parts (good for pieces with many instruments), guitar tablature, flexible chord symbols, and fret diagrams. The program integrates directly with the MuseScore.com online library of scores, and music written with the application can be displayed and played using the MuseScore mobile app. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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MuseScore 2.0 Released
A decent surge protector is an important piece of equipment in any office or entertainment center. They don’t last forever, though, so make sure you take the time and purge your surge on occasion to keep your electronics protected. Read more…
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Why You Should Periodically Replace Your Surge Protectors
In 1815 William Smith drew a map of the United Kingdom which transformed the scientific landscape: It laid the foundations for modern geology, and identified natural resources which would beget the Industrial Revolution. But up until last year, this first-edition copy was considered to be lost forever. Read more…
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This Lost Map Changed How We Saw the World
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
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
A design classic from 1968, with all the dials, knobs, switches and buttons you could possibly need. Read the rest
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