Tech Today w/ Ken May

It remains to be seen if they’ll be the big game-changer in education that Google hopes they will be, but the company is making some progress at getting its Chromebooks into schools. The latest push is a deal with three US school districts, which will see some 27,000 Chromebooks land in the hand of students in Iowa, Illinois and South Carolina. As CNET reports, South Carolina’s Richland School District Two is making by far the biggest investment of the lot, ordering 19,000 Chromebooks that will be used as part of a three-year program for students in the third through twelfth grades. As for Google itself, it still isn’t being too specific on the total number of Chromebooks now being used by schools, noting only that “hundreds” of schools across 41 states are using them in at least one classroom.

Google strikes deal to bring 27,000 Chromebooks to US schools in three states originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google strikes deal to bring 27,000 Chromebooks to US schools in three states

Long pressing—that is, tapping and holding down on a part of your screen—provides a lot of handy shortcuts on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Here’s a look at practically everything you can with this technique to save you a bunch of time typing and navigating your device. More »

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All the Awesome Things You Can Do with a Long Press on Your iPhone, iPad, or iPad touch [Video]

This newly created X-ray laser is just unimaginably powerful. It’s a billion times brighter than any previous X-ray source, and it can probe hot dense matter at nearly four million degrees. This laser could unlock the secrets of the Sun. More »

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Most powerful laser ever created can heat matter to over 3.6 million degrees [Physics]

Microsoft is slowly turning its stalwart desktop OS into a mobile powerhouse. The company just keeps rolling out improvements and features for Windows 8 aimed at really making upcoming tablets competitive with their Android and iOS-based market mates. After cramming mobile broadband tools into the tile-happy OS, now Redmond is turning its attention towards sensors. The next version of Windows will offer integrated support for gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometers and ambient light sensors among other things. Devs will even be able to use multiple sensors in conjunction for more accurate interaction. Check out the video after the break for more details.

Continue reading Windows 8 adds sensor support, will be the PC to turn, turn, turn

Windows 8 adds sensor support, will be the PC to turn, turn, turn originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows 8 adds sensor support, will be the PC to turn, turn, turn

Jailbreaking or rooting your phone is pretty much a nerd birthright at this point. But soon it could once again be deemed illegal, if the acts’ exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act runs out. That’s where you come in. More »

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Jailbreaking (or Rooting) Your Phone Could Become Illegal Again. Fight It. [Jailbreak]

When Mac OS X 10.7 Lion introduced full disk encryption, called FileVault 2, it was a huge improvement over the original FileVault, which only encrypts a user’s home folder. And because of the “creative” way FileVault was implemented, there were numerous incompatibilities, gotchas, and caveats to its use. FileVault 2 on the other hand, encrypts individual disk blocks so the encryption is invisible to the file system and really doesn’t get in the way of normal use. Adding to this is another new feature in Lion: the recovery partition and the network recovery system introduced in last year’s hardware.

In almost all cases, these new features will work together without trouble. Still, there are a few things you should know, especially if you use encrypted Time Machine backups and if you can’t depend on fast Internet connectivity to be available should your boot drive fail.

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Lion’s FileVault 2 and disk restore: caveat encryptor

Microsoft will upgrade its disc technology for its next Xbox from DVDs to Blu-Ray discs, catching up to rival Sony, games industry sources tell Kotaku. More »

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Sources: The Next Xbox Will Play Blu-Ray, May Not Play Used Games (And Will Introduce Kinect 2) [Xbox 720]

IFPI, the international trade group for the record industry, has trumpeted a study that allegedly shows that France saw a surge in iTunes sales following the institution of a mass-scale regime of “disconnection warnings” — threats to remove you and your family from the Internet if you don’t stop downloading. These warnings are the first step of the controversial HADOPI system, which is the first of a series of global “three strikes” laws pushed for by IFPI.

TorrentFreak had a look at the study, which was written by researches at Wellesley College and Carnegie Mellon, and they found that none of the benefits claimed by the record industry were in its conclusions: “What the researchers found is that in France, compared to five other European countries, more music was sold through iTunes. Looking at the graph below (from the report), it’s clear that the “uplift” in France before Hadopi was introduced (March 2009) is actually much sharper than the two years after.”

“We also estimated the model for the 6 months before and after September 2010, as this was the first month that HADOPI began sending out first notices. In this case, the resulting coefficient was close to zero and statistically insignificant.”

Indeed, when the three-strikes warnings were actually sent out, there was no effect on iTunes sales compared to the control countries. This is unusual, because you would expect that the hundreds of thousands of warnings that went out would have had more of an impact than the ‘news’ that this could happen in the future.

In addition, if we look at the search trends for Hadopi and The Pirate Bay we don’t see a drop in interest for the latter, suggesting that the interest for pirated goods remained stable.

Anti-Piracy Warnings Have No Effect on iTunes Sales

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Study does not show that disconnection threats terrorized France into using iTunes

In the days before Intel, Apple and Google, computing was a much more traditional affair. We’re talking levers, gears, and other mechanisms that could all automate counting in some way or other. Russian scientist Vladimir Lukyanov, however, built one that ran on water. More »

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The Russian Computer That Ran On Water [Past Perfect]

zacharye writes with an except from an article over at BGR about Apple’s quarterly results: ” Disappointing’ though it may have been to some, the iPhone 4S propelled what is now confirmed to have been the most profitable quarter any technology company has ever recorded. Apple on Wednesday reported record earnings for the December quarter, revealing a profit of $13.06 billion on revenue that surpassed $46 billion. Among technology companies, Apple’s fiscal first quarter represents the most profitable quarter ever recorded. Only one U.S. company has ever posted a more profitable quarter — Exxon managed a profit of $14.8 billion in the third quarter of 2008 — and the driving force behind Apple’s record-setting performance was quite clearly the iPhone.”

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Apple Announces Most Profitable Quarter in History