You’ve likely heard before that you should never defragment your SSD. Conventional wisdom says not only do solid state drives not need defragging, doing so would cause unnecessary writes to the drive. This is only partially true. In fact, Windows does sometimes defragment SSDs—on purpose. Read more…
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Windows Does Defragment SSDs, But It’s Okay
During a court hearing in Oakland, California, it’s come to light that, between 2007 and 2009, Apple deleted tracks downloaded from rival music services off of iPods. Read more…
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Apple Deleted Competitors’ Songs From Your iPod
Molly McHugh writes with this story about sensors that can be attached to temporary tattoos to monitor various medical information. “The Center for Wearable Sensors at the University of California San Diego has been experimenting with attaching sensors to temporary tattoos in order to extract data from the body. The tattoos are worn exactly as a regular temporary tattoo would be worn. The sensors simply sit atop the skin without penetrating it and interact with Bluetooth or other wireless devices with a signal in order to send the data….A biofuel battery applied as a temporary tattoo converts sweat into energy, and a startup within the center has developed a strip that extracts data from sweat to explain how your body is reacting to certain types of exercise. Amay Bandodkar, a fourth year PhD student at UCSD, explains that the sensors are programmed to react to the amount of lactate the body produces.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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How High-Tech Temporary Tattoos Will Hack Your Skin
jones_supa writes In past builds of Windows 10 Technical Preview there has been an interesting feature called Battery Saver, but for the time being it has been just a mockup. In a leaked build 9888, the code is now in place. Battery Saver, as the name implies, will help your mobile device make the most out of your battery. This feature works by limiting the background activity on your device when the mode is activated. You can turn the feature on any time but there is also a setting to have it automatically turn on when the battery capacity goes below a user-defined percentage. Considering that this build was not supposed to make its way out of Redmond and that the company is not releasing any new builds this year, this may be the best look we get until the Consumer Preview arrives. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Windows 10 Adds Battery Saver Feature
SmartAboutThings writes In Q3 2014, IDC notes that Google shipped 715, 500 Chromebooks to U.S. schools while Apple shipped 702, 000 iPads. Thus, Apple’s iPad has lost its lead over Google’s line of Chromebook laptops in the U.S. education market as Google shipped more devices to schools last quarter. While analysts say [registration required] that this advantage for Google’s Chromebooks can be attributed to their low cost, the presence of a physical keyboard has also been seen as an important factor. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Chromebooks Overtake iPads In US Education Market
The most inefficient part of a gearing system is also its most vital: the teeth. While they allow the systems to, y’know, work, they also introduce vast quantities of frictional losses and, in turn, mechanical wear—so this new system uses magnetic levitation to do away with them. Read more…
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This Maglev Gearbox Doesn’t Need Teeth
The human eye is a more complex and mysterious thing than we thought. Recently, a group of scientists were puzzled by flashes of green light they saw from an infrared laser, whose light should have been far outside the visible spectrum. Like scientists do, they investigated. Human eyes do indeed perceive infrared light, they found, but not they same way they perceive ordinary colors. It’s weirder than that. Read more…
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Humans Have Been Able to Perceive Infrared Light This Whole Time
Ever since the dawn of the Twitch livestreaming age, it’s seemed like a no-brainer for Steam to add some sort of quick and easy broadcasting option. And yet for some reason (hint: it’s Valve), they’ve taken their time. But finally, it’s here. Read more…
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You Can Now Livestream Games On Steam
HP has just announced a new business laptop. But judging on looks alone, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s just a Macbook Air with a sticker over the Apple logo. Thankfully, there’s a few tricks inside to differentiate things. Read more…
What does the Navy do when it needs to know for sure that a new weapon system or electronic countermeasure works, not just under stringent lab-like settings or at a land based range, but in its intended operating environment? They put it to sea on a giant remote controlled Destroyer and throw live missiles at it. Read more…
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This Destroyer Is The World’s Largest Remote Controlled Vehicle