What have you grilled on this summer? A propane burner? A charcoal fire? Maybe even a fire pit? How about A RIVER OF LAVA? That’s exactly how the gastronomical adventurers at Bompas & Parr recently cooked up two huge steaks—and then they used lightning. Read more…
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These Maniacs Cooked Steak With Molten Lava and Lightning
Amko Leenarts is the Director of Interior Design for Ford Motor Company, creating the interior look for Ford’s products worldwide. He spoke with Gizmodo about the design influences, technology, and safety considerations that go into future designs, and later today he’ll be in Gizmodo’s comments section answering your questions. Read more…
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How Ford’s Top Interior Designer Puts the Future in the Front Seat
You eventually tune it out, but the constant whir of a desktop computer’s cooling fans can take a toll on your psyche. It’s like a buzzing mosquito that never strikes, and never stops. So the folks at a German company called Silent Power have created a compact desktop PC that trades noisy fans for a block of exposed copper foam that dissipates heat so effectively no fans are required. Read more…
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A Nest of Copper Foam Lets This Tiny PC Run Silently Without Fans
The key element for a great tablet has always been a truly innovative and top performing display, and the best leading edge tablets have always flaunted their beautiful high tech displays. Read more…
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Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Has One of the Best Displays Yet
Lucas123 writes: The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies is suing Ford and General Motors for millions of dollars over alleged copyrights infringement violations because their vehicles’ CD players can rip music to infotainment center hard drives. The AARC claims in its filing (PDF) that the CD player’s ability to copy music violates the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. The Act protects against distributing digital audio recording devices whose primary purpose is to rip copyrighted material. For example, Ford’s owner’s manual explains, “Your mobile media navigation system has a Jukebox which allows you to save desired tracks or CDs to the hard drive for later access. The hard drive can store up to 10GB (164 hours; approximately 2, 472 tracks) of music.” The AARC wants $2, 500 for each digital audio recording device installed in a vehicle, the amount it says should have been paid in royalties. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ford, GM Sued Over Vehicles’ Ability To Rip CD Music To Hard Drive
Earth is an unforgiving place. Volcanoes erupt, rivers erode, continents break up—it’s a small miracle every time a millions-of-years-old creature is found fossilized in rock. By comparison, the moon is dead and lifeless; astronaut footprints will be preserved forever in moon dust. So it’s the moon that could hold the secrets to life on ancient Earth. Read more…
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The Moon Might Be Littered With Fossils From Ancient Earth
Nerval’s Lobster writes: Over at Dice, there’s a breakdown of the programming languages that could prove most popular over the next year or two, including Apple’s Swift, JavaScript, CSS3, and PHP. But perhaps the most interesting entry on the list is Erlang, an older language invented in 1986 by engineers at Ericsson. It was originally intended to be used specifically for telecommunications needs, but has since evolved into a general-purpose language, and found a home in cloud-based, high-performance computing when concurrency is needed. “There aren’t a lot of Erlang jobs out there, ” writes developer Jeff Cogswell. “However, if you do master it (and I mean master it, not just learn a bit about it), then you’ll probably land a really good job. That’s the trade-off: You’ll have to devote a lot of energy into it. But if you do, the payoffs could be high.” And while the rest of the featured languages are no-brainers with regard to popularity, it’s an open question how long it might take Swift to become popular, given how hard Apple will push it as the language for developing on iOS. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Programming Languages You’ll Need Next Year (and Beyond)
sciencehabit (1205606) writes “Pregnant women who smoke don’t just harm the health of their baby—they may actually impair their child’s DNA, according to new research. A genetic analysis shows that the children of mothers who smoke harbor far more chemical modifications of their genome — known as epigenetic changes — than kids of non-smoking mothers. Many of these are on genes tied to addiction and fetal development. The finding may explain why the children of smokers continue to suffer health complications later in life. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A newly discovered virus has been found by a San Diego State University team to live inside more than half of all sampled human gut cells sampled. Exploring genetic material found in intestinal samples, the international team uncovered the CrAssphage virus. They say the virus could influence the behaviour of some of the most common bacteria in our gut. Researchers say the virus has the genetic fingerprint of a bacteriophage – a type of virus known to infect bacteria. Phages may work to control the behaviour of bacteria they infect – some make it easier for bacteria to inhabit in their environments while others allow bacteria to become more potent. [Study lead Dr. Robert] Edwards said: “In some way phages are like wolves in the wild, surrounded by hares and deer. “They are critical components of our gut ecosystems, helping control the growth of bacterial populations and allowing a diversity of species.” According to the team, CrAssphage infects one of the most common types of bacteria in our guts. National Geographic gives some idea why a virus so common in our gut should have evaded discovery for so long, but at least CrAssphage finally has a Wikipedia page of its own. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Newly Discovered Virus Widespread in Human Gut
Virtually all of your gadgets tote lithium ion batteries—but while they’re the best you can hope for at the moment, new engineering means that pure lithium batteries are now a possibility , and they could double the life of your phone. Read more…
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A New Pure Lithium Battery Could Double Your Phone’s Life