Audi’s self-driving car is traveling 550 miles to Las Vegas

Audi is confident that its self-driving car technology is ready for prime time — so confident, in fact, that it’s about to give the platform a very public long-distance test. An A7 Sportback with the mostly autonomous hardware is traveling 550 miles from Stanford, California to CES in Las Vegas, with trained members of the press taking turns behind the wheel. Not that they’ll be doing much. The A7’s cameras, lasers and radar will let it control highway driving so long as it’s under 70MPH, and it’ll only hand over the reins in “city environments” and other situations where it reaches its limits. This is a marketing stunt, to be sure, but it could show that autopilot systems are capable of taking over during long, monotonous trips. Your pilot to #CES today is “Jack, ” an Audi A7 built with the latest automated driving technology. #DrivingNotDriving #Vegas A video posted by Audi (@audi) on Jan 1, 2015 at 9:46am PST Filed under: Transportation Comments Source: Audi USA

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Audi’s self-driving car is traveling 550 miles to Las Vegas

Would you ditch your MacBook Air for this thinner Windows detachable?

“Our Chi is thinner than Air.” That was how ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih opened his CES keynote today. If you’re not following, what he meant was the super-slim ASUS Transformer Book T300 Chi that was teased at Computex. Well, the time has come. This 12.5-inch, all-aluminum convertible laptop is now confirmed to carry Intel’s latest Broadwell Core M processor (the new 5Y71 or the already-available 5Y10) to enable its fanless design. And don’t worry, it’ll still have that sweet WQHD (2, 560 x 1, 440) IPS screen option on top of the 1080p base configuration, plus a 128GB iSSD to keep it running smoothly. However, there’s been a subtle change: The device has managed to gain a little bulk over the last six months, going from 14.3mm (0.56 inch) docked or 7.3mm (0.29 inch) detached to 16.5mm (0.65 inch) and 7.6mm (0.3 inch), respectively. But hey, the docked unit is still slimmer than the MacBook Air by a mere 0.5mm, and given its ability to switch between form factors, we’d still be impressed even if they had the same thickness; and we can just as easily forgive the former’s 70 grams of extra weight. Announced alongside the T300 Chi are two smaller models: the T100 Chi (10.1-inch, 1, 920 x 1, 200 IPS) and the T90 Chi (8.9-inch, 1, 280 x 800 IPS). Both are powered by Intel’s less powerful Atom Z3775 processor and pack either 32GB or 64GB of eMMC storage. When docked, the T90 is just as thick as its T300 sibling, but the T100 is even thinner by 3.3mm. As for weight, both are obviously much lighter — 1.06kg for the T100 and 0.75kg for the T90. Starting from February, these laptops will be rolling with the following price points: $699 for the 1080p T300, $799 for the WQHD T300, $399 for the T100 and $299 for the T90. Not bad, not bad. P.S.: “Chi” means “air” in Mandarin Chinese. Filed under: Laptops , Tablets , ASUS Comments

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Would you ditch your MacBook Air for this thinner Windows detachable?

Samsung’s first portable SSD packs fast storage for relatively little cash

You don’t exactly have a ton of options when it comes to portable solid-state drives. You can get fast performance or high capacity at a halfway affordable price, but rarely both. Samsung thinks it can strike that tricky balance with its first-ever external option, the Portable SSD T1. The USB 3.0 storage is based on the same speedy-yet-cheap V-NAND chips as the 850 EVO drive you might buy for your gaming PC, letting it hold a large chunk of your files without devastating your wallet or slowing down — it reads and writes at 450 MB/s, or just about desktop-level speeds. The line starts off modestly with a 250GB drive that costs $180, but you can opt for 500GB ($300) or 1TB ($600) if you have a lot of games or movies to carry around. That’s still expensive compared to spinning hard disks, but it’s a relative steal for the performance. Look for the T1 to hit US stores around mid-January. Filed under: Storage , Samsung Comments Source: Samsung

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Samsung’s first portable SSD packs fast storage for relatively little cash

YouTube is almost ready to take your 360-degree videos

Did you recently grab a 360-degree camera like the Bublcam or Ricoh Theta ? You’ll have an easy way to show off your all-encompassing footage very shortly. A YouTube spokesperson has confirmed to both Engadget and Gizmodo that its service will be adding support for 360-degree videos in the “coming weeks.” It’s not clear what the technical limitations are, but the update will undoubtedly require a way to pan around those videos — this isn’t simply a matter of raising the ceiling on file sizes. However it works, you can expect to see a lot of immersive online cinema in the near future. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD , Google Comments Source: Gizmodo

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YouTube is almost ready to take your 360-degree videos

D-Link’s New Wi-Fi Routers Look Like Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology

At one time when all you needed to connect was a couple of laptops, a cheap wireless router would more than suffice for most homes. But these days, when there’s everything from phones to tablets to TVs relying on your Wi-Fi network, it makes sense to splurge on your hardware. And D-Link’s new 11AC Ultra Performance Series routers promise speeds of up to 5.6 Gbps optimized for the myriad of different devices constantly hopping on and off your network. Read more…

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D-Link’s New Wi-Fi Routers Look Like Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology

The New Chevy Volt First Look: Less Concept, More Sedan

Instead of waiting for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next week to finally unveil what the new Chevy Volt looks like, General Motors pulled back the curtain on its new electric hybrid at CES just now. No details, no other specifics, just our first full look at the vehicle. Read more…

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The New Chevy Volt First Look: Less Concept, More Sedan

California’s 220MPH High-Speed Railway Is Finally Being Built

It’s been a long time coming, but the state of California is finally building its long-promised high-speed rail link. The new line, which will see trains travel at up to 220mph, will finally start construction this week. Read more…

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California’s 220MPH High-Speed Railway Is Finally Being Built

What Did People Use to Mask Surgical Pain Before Modern Anesthesia?

Other than ingesting alcohol and narcotics in sufficient doses to induce a state of analgesia, for most of its history, people in the West got through surgery with the aid of little more than forcible restraint and grit. Read more…

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What Did People Use to Mask Surgical Pain Before Modern Anesthesia?

The World’s First Inflatable Flashlight Never Needs New Batteries

There’s no point in keeping a stash of emergency flashlights around your home if the batteries inside them just end up getting stolen for TV remotes and the kids’ toys. So the folks who created the original LUCI, a dirt-cheap inflatable solar-powered rechargeable lantern , have tweaked its design for the new Luci EMRG so that it produces a more intense focused beam and can now double as an emergency flashlight. Read more…

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The World’s First Inflatable Flashlight Never Needs New Batteries

A 51,000-Tonne Cargo Ship’s Been Deliberately Grounded Near the UK

This gigantic car transporter has been run aground—on purpose—after it began to list just off the coast of the UK. It weighs 51, 000 tonnes, is laden with 1, 400 cars—and now needs to be righted. Read more…

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A 51,000-Tonne Cargo Ship’s Been Deliberately Grounded Near the UK