The Tesla Model S is already a shockingly quick car. The electric drive train will propel the car to 60 miles per hour in just over five seconds. But that’s not fast enough for Steve Saleen, owner of Saleen Automotive, who recently said his company’s upgraded example of the Model S, called the FourSixteen, will sprint to 60 mph in the mid- to low four-second range. Because why not. Read More
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The Saleen FourSixteen Is A Faster, Louder And More Slippery Tesla Model S
Apple’s iBeacon tech is still in its early stages, but we’re starting to see more people show interest in the idea of connecting their smartphones with real-world places and items. Ifinity, a Warsaw-based company, uses a similar type of beacon service but wants to raise its scalability so that a whole city can make use of it. Ifinity’s beacons are small transmitters… Read More
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Beacon Transmitter Service Ifinity Valued At $12M After Seed Round
You can buy your pretty new iPhone 6 with somewhat of a clearer conscience this fall. Apple announced today that they’re eliminating two known toxins—benzene and n-hexane—from the production of iPhone and iPads. Read more…
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Apple Is Banning Two Hazardous Chemicals From iPhone Production
One of the defining images of the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s and 90s was William Gibson’s cyberspace decks. Although never explicitly described, they seemed to be something like a self-contained keyboard with electrode leads hanging off and a sometimes unmarked keyboard that hackers used to jack into the Matrix. I remember running around in my parents’ basement with my… Read More
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The Das Keyboard 4 Is The Hacker’s Choice
Megan Geuss RENO, NV—On an uncharacteristically rainy day in Western Nevada, a small tour bus of journalists rumbled past security gates at the Ormat Steamboat Complex in Washoe County. We were there to learn about geothermal power, a renewable energy resource produced by transferring heat from underground rocks up to power plants. Most people think of Iceland when they think of geothermal power. On that island, approximately 90 percent of homes are heated by geothermal energy. But some 12 gigawatts of geothermal power are generated worldwide, and the US is one of the largest producers of it, generating nearly 3.4 gigawatts in 2013 . Ormat’s Steamboat Complex is within the Reno city limits, and it’s made up of seven smaller plants that collectively generate 78 megawatts of power. A typical coal-fired power plant can generate around 660 megawatts of power , so Ormat’s 78 megawatts are not a lot by comparison. But when compared to other renewables, geothermal has some advantages. Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Geothermal energy has success in Nevada, wants to spread to the rest of the west
Today, the European Space Agency announced that its Rosetta mission successfully arrived at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10-year journey. As the probe approached over the past several weeks, it provided greater detail on the oddly shaped comet, which was venting water as its orbit drew it closer to the Sun. Now, at just 100km from the comet’s surface, Rosetta is providing detailed images of a truly otherworldly landscape. 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko occupies an elliptical orbit that takes it from areas beyond Jupiter to somewhere in between Earth and Mars (currently, it’s midway between Jupiter and Mars). That presents a significant challenge, since any probe intended to track the comet must roughly match its orbit before approaching—or it would need a prohibitive volume of propellant to slow down. This explains Rosetta’s 10-year journey, which included four orbital flybys of Earth and Mars to put it in place for a gradual approach. Earlier this year, Rosetta successfully woke from hibernation , and it’s been imaging the comet during its approach. Early images indicated that 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has a two-lobed structure that some have compared to a rubber duck, albeit one with an unusually large head. The second lobe, corresponding to the duck’s body, is broader and more oblong. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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After 10 years, Rosetta probe catches up with its comet destination
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
The superefficient Biolite woodstove will boil water in minutes from twigs and charge your phone while it does it. Read the rest
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Superefficient campstove that charges your phone while it boils water, using only twigs
Today, the Supreme Court has reversed the decision of the Second Circuit in ABC vs. Aereo. Translation? Aereo lost big. It’s now illegal. And that sucks. Read more…
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Aereo Down: Supreme Court Kills the Cord-Cutter’s Dream
Sometimes a device comes so close to being perfect that you’d be forgiven for not realizing that with just a single tweak, it can become, in actual fact, perfect. The Kindle Paperwhite is such a device, as an e-reader that Amazon has crafted so well that you pretty much never need look beyond for anything better. But while a regular book ends up with wrinkly pages after being caught in… Read More
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This Waterproof Kindle Paperwhite Is Humanity’s Greatest Achievement