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Nano-sized ‘yolks’ should lead to longer-lasting batteries

Those eggs you might have had for breakfast? They’re not just food — they may be the key to longer-running batteries in your devices. Scientists at MIT and Tsinghua University have developed a nanoparticle battery electrode whose egg-like design is built to last. Their invention, which houses a shape-changing aluminum “yolk” in a titanium dioxide cell, can go through charging cycles without degrading like the graphite electrodes in conventional power packs. That could improve not only the overall longevity of the battery, but also its capacity and maximum power. You’d have gadgets that not only hold out for longer between charges, but don’t need to be replaced quite so often under heavy use. This is still a lab experiment, but it’s closer to practical reality than you think. The manufacturing technique is simple, and these materials are relatively easy to find. The yolks already hold up well under stress, for that matter. Even with super-fast charging (which typically shortens a battery’s lifespan), a test unit had just over half its capacity after 500 cycles. So long as the team does get its tech into a shipping product, you could see a wave of hardware that reduces many of your energy-related woes, such as range anxiety in electric cars or phone batteries that die before you’re ready to upgrade. [Image credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT] Filed under: Science Comments Source: MIT News Tags: aluminum, battery, biomimicry, lithium-ion, lithiumion, mit, nanoparticles, science, TsinghuaUniversity

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Nano-sized ‘yolks’ should lead to longer-lasting batteries

Turn a Raspberry Pi Into a Google Music Player

Google Play’s a pretty simple way to get access to all your music. If you’re looking to build a little standalone machine for playing that music, GitHub user fredley created a simple little front end that’s easy to use. Read more…

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Turn a Raspberry Pi Into a Google Music Player

iOS 9 Will Use Cell Data When Your Wi-Fi Sucks

The latest version of the iOS 9 beta has brought some goodies, among them the new Wi-Fi Assist feature, which will recognize bad Wi-Fi connections, and use cellular data instead. http://gizmodo.com/ios-9-preview-… Read more…

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iOS 9 Will Use Cell Data When Your Wi-Fi Sucks

Secret Origins Of The Japanese Superhero Show That Became Power Rangers

If you look at the picture above, you probably think of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, costumed heroes who have been kicking their way across TV in different incarnations for nearly 20 years—but you’d be wrong. These are actually the Zyurangers, the stars of a Japanese TV series that inadvertently spawned a global sensation. Read more…

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Secret Origins Of The Japanese Superhero Show That Became Power Rangers

Toshiba’s new flash chips hold twice the data

Judging by recent announcements, we’re about to enter a golden age of fast, nearly unlimited storage for all the high-res selfies you can shoot. Following an announcement by Intel and Micron last week , Toshiba and partner SanDisk revealed their own 256Gb flash chips. Toshiba already has the smallest flash cells in the world at 15 nanometers, which it stacks in 48 layers to maximize density. The new chips add in 3-bit tech (first used by Samsung ) to squeeze even more bytes in, helping it double the storage of chips it announced just a few months ago. The result will be faster and more reliable memory for smartphones, SSDs and other devices. Intel and Micron announced 256Gb chips using different, 32-layer tech earlier this year , so they may beat Toshiba/SanDisk to the manufacturing punch. Consumers will be the main beneficiaries of the rivalry, in any case. Micron said the tech will eventually yield up to 10TB laptop drives at much lower prices per gigabyte than current models. It’ll also result in cheaper and faster memory chips for smartphones and other mobile devices. Toshiba’s in the process of building its new fab plant in Japan, and said the 256Gb chips will be available sometime in 2016. Filed under: Storage Comments Source: Toshiba

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Toshiba’s new flash chips hold twice the data

Intel targets gamers with sixth-gen ‘Skylake’ CPU launch

With mobile annihilating the mainstream PC industry, Intel knows gaming is buttering its bread . The chip giant launched its sixth-gneration “Skylake” desktop processors today with two enthusiast quad-core models: the Core I7-6700K and i5-6600K. The 14-nanometer chips are unlocked for maximum overclocking (all the “K”-series will be), and if you’re not into that, the two new chips have fairly high base frequencies: 4.0GHz for the Core i7-6700K and 3.5GHz for the i5-6600K. Compared to similar current-gen models, prices are reasonable — suggested retail is $350 for the i7-6700K and $243 for the i5-6600K, with street prices likely lower. Unfortunately, the i7-6700K offers just a modest performance increase (10 percent) over last-gen Haswell i7-4790K CPUs and little, if any, advantage over the current Haswell-E i7-5820K chip. However, the Skylake models are the first 14-nanometer performance CPU’s that Intel has launched, since the lower-powered Broadwell 14-nanometer desktop chips aren’t aimed at gamers. The smaller transistors should help overclocking, and rumor has it that the i7-6700K can be pushed to 5GHz, which may give it an edge over current tech. At any rate, with 10-nanometer “Cannonlake” CPUs now delayed , Skylake is it until next year. Intel also revealed a new platform for the chips, the Z170 chipset. Like Haswell-E, the Skylake models use DDR4 RAM, which is much faster than DDR3 memory, but also way more expensive. (Skylake chips won’t run on Haswell-E X99 motherboards, which also use DDR4 RAM.) However, the Z170 chipset has a dual memory controller, so you can use use cheaper DDR3L memory on motherboards that support it . Another plus to the platform is new Intel HD 530 graphics, which run 20-40 percent faster than last-gen Intel HD. It also has 16 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, giving you more USB 3, graphics and storage options. And Intel just happens to have a new PCI Express 3.0-based 800GB 750 series SSD drive with read speeds up to 2, 200 MB/s. Many folks expected Intel to launch more of its Skylake lineup today, including mainstream and mobile CPUs, so what happened? That was just a rumor in the first place, but Intel has narrowed down the timeline. It’ll reveal more information at the Intel Developers Forum on August 18th, and launch the rest of the sixth-gen Skylake lineup sometime in Q3 2015. The mainstream chips will also see a modest performance bump over current-gen tech, but are expected to sip less power, giving future Macbooks, ultrabooks, laptops and tablets improved battery life. Down the road, it may also reveal more high-performance desktop Skylake CPUs, hopefully including an ” Extreme ” model. Filed under: Desktops , Gaming , Intel Comments Tags: Core i7-6600K, Core i7-6700K, enthusiast, gaming, Haswell, intel, Sixth-generation, Skylake

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Intel targets gamers with sixth-gen ‘Skylake’ CPU launch

New Xbox dashboard and backwards compatibility come in November

At E3, Microsoft unveiled a revamped dashboard for the Xbox One that put an emphasis on speed and community. It’s now here at Gamescom when the company has revealed when exactly this revamped user interface will be filtering down onto your console: this November. The biggest additional feature is backwards compatibility , which means that around 100 Xbox 360 titles will be available to play on the hardware. Of course, if you’ve already paid for these games for the older console, you won’t be charged again for the privilege. In addition, the company’s Mike Ybarra has revealed that all future Games with Gold that are available on the Xbox 360 will also be accessible on the Xbox One. At the same time, he also announced that DVR functionality — which is also free — will come to the console in time for the holidays. The rest of the dashboard’s features were outlined at E3, the most notable being the integration of Cortana, Microsoft’s digital voice assistant. She can be used to perform minor tasks — like recording and sharing in-game footage — without you having to stop your epic career mode run on Fifa 16 . The revamped UI also offers a new quick-launch menu that pops up when you double-tap the Xbox button on your controller. We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany for Gamescom 2015. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show. Filed under: Gaming , Microsoft Comments Source: Xbox Tags: BackwardsCompatibility, Dashboard, FallUpdate, Gamescom2015, GamesWithGold, Microsoft, Xbox, XboxOne

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New Xbox dashboard and backwards compatibility come in November

Huge malware campaign used Yahoo’s ad network

You’ve probably heard of malware-laden ads causing havoc on the web, but rarely on this scale. Malwarebytes has discovered a malware campaign that was using Yahoo’s ad network to target legions upon legions of visitors — Yahoo’s main site racks up 6.9 billion visits per month. While it’s not clear what would happen if you fell victim to an attack, the Flash-based exploit kit linked to the campaign typically includes both ad fraud and ransomware . In short, there’s a real chance that you could have been locked out of your PC simply by checking on your fantasy sports league . Notice the emphasis on the past tense, though. Yahoo was quick to take this “malvertising” campaign down, so you’re not at risk as I write this. Even so, it’s not exactly comforting that malware writers could even slip their code into such a large ad network. Yahoo’s still investigating what happened, but it appears that online ad giants may need stricter filters on what gets through. [Image credit: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez] Filed under: Internet Comments Via: New York Times Source: Malwarebytes Tags: ads, advertising, flash, internet, malvertising, malware, ransomware, security, web, yahoo

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Huge malware campaign used Yahoo’s ad network

DJs can buy remix-friendly ‘Stems’ music files starting today

Back in March, Native Instruments — the company behind the ubiquitous Traktor DJ software — announced Stems : a music format that lets DJs and remixers to control individual parts of a track. Today Stems launches to the buying public on a number of popular music stores including Beatport and Traxsource have them listed already, Bleep, Juno, whatpeopleplay, and Wasabeat will also be selling them. For years DJs and producers’ only chance of finding a cappella versions of songs was to hope a vocal-only recording existed. The advent of the internet made finding these a little easier, but they were still rare. Expensive software can sometimes help you surgically remove parts or a track, or isolate vocals, but the results aren’t always very clean. Stems makes all that a thing of the past. The new file-format allows DJs to turn the separate parts of a track on and off at will. Importantly, Stems is open, so anyone will be able to export music as a compatible file (Native Instruments will release tools for this later in the year), and big artists and labels are already on board. A Stems file will break a song into four parts; usually drums, vocals, bass and lead, each of which can be manipulated independently with compatible hardware (Native Instruments’ Kontrol S8 , D2 , and F1 for example). Beatport, will even let you audition tracks as separate parts in the browser (as seen below). It’s unlikely most casual listeners need to worry about Stems — it’s definitely more for performers — but, if there’s a killer track, with a really annoying vocal , there might just be a workaround at last. An update for Traktor that adds Stem compatibility is available via NI Service Center today. Filed under: Misc , Home Entertainment Comments Source: Stems , Beatport

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DJs can buy remix-friendly ‘Stems’ music files starting today

Gamers: It’s safe to upgrade to Windows 10

While the IT managers of the world stress about Windows 10’s buggy mail client , default browser , and dodgy domains, for the gamer, Microsoft’s latest and greatest OS is an exciting proposition. Windows 10, if you didn’t know, comes with DirectX 12 , which promises significant performance increases (particularly for AMD graphics card users), thanks to its new low-level API features. The trouble is, right now, there aren’t actually any games out there that use DX12. While Nvidia and AMD have both launched new drivers to bring DX12 support to a range of their current GPUs, there’s not a single DX12 game to play. 3DMark has a neat draw call benchmark that gives us some idea of how much faster DX12 will be, but it’s entirely synthetic. One of the first games to actually use DX12 will be StarDock’s upcoming RTS Ashes of the Singularity , with an early beta build showing a significant uplift in performance. We were hoping to check out a special benchmark build of the game this week, but sadly it’s been pushed back. Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Gamers: It’s safe to upgrade to Windows 10