In the world of head-worn displays, Google Glass seems to lately get most of the praise as well as most of the dirty looks, though it’s far from alone. At this year’s DroidCon in London, I talked with Epson Europe product manager Marc-Antoine Godfroid about a very different kind of head-worn display: the Moverio BT-100. Epson’s display is running a Google operating system, but it isn’t competing with Glass, at least not directly. The hardware in this case is a relatively high-definition stereo display meant for immersion (whether that means information overlays or watching recorded video) hooked to an external control unit running Android, rather than the sparer, information-dashboard, all-in-one approach of Glass. One other big difference: Epson’s stereo, full-color headset is cheaper than Glass, and available now. Hit the link below to see what it looks like. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Epson Tries to One-up Google Glass with Moverio-Goggles (Video)
An anonymous reader writes “There’s many improvements due in the Linux 3.13 kernel that just entered development. On the matter of new hardware support, there’s open-source driver support for Intel Broadwell and AMD Radeon R9 290 ‘Hawaii’ graphics. NFTables will eventually replace IPTables; the multi-queue block layer is supposed to make disk access much faster on Linux; HDMI audio has improved; Stereo/3D HDMI support is found for Intel hardware; file-system improvements are on the way, along with support for limiting the power consumption of individual PC components.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Dawn Kawamoto writes “Sometimes, making more money is not enough. Just ask Salesforce.com. The SaaS company announced it would cut 200 jobs, during its second quarter earnings call. The cuts are coming, despite the company raising its revenue forecast for its fiscal year. Salesforce.com says it’s initiating the cuts to reduce overlapping roles and to (you guessed it) gain ‘synergy’, following its effort to meld its cloud marketing platform company ExactTarget with its social media market suite Marketing Cloud. And apparently this isn’t the first time Salesforce has tried to squeeze out those nebulous ‘synergies.’ It reportedly cut 100 jobs in October, when it merged its social media platform companies Radian6 and Buddy Media.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Remember the Thonet bicycle concept , and how we weren’t sure if the seat-tube-less design would be possible to execute in steambent wood? Seeing as there’s still no word on whether it will become a reality, Japanese design student Yojiro Oshima has done them one better with a prototype of his unconventional bicycle concept. For his degree project at Musahino Art University’s Craft & Industrial Design Department, he has designed and built a Y-Foil/Softride-style frame by hand (it wasn’t based on a chair per se, but I’m seeing a little Wegner myself). The designer recently sent the project to James Thomas of BicycleDesign.net , where Oshima notes : “This proposal is about the shape of the frame and the handle mainly which doesn’t concern what material it’s made out of. The maximum comfort can be put into practice by wood.” Thus, the frame concept also echoes that of the previously-seen (steel) Van Hulsteijn , which is currently in production. A visible seam Regarding the construction and other carpentry/bike nerd concerns, Oshima adds, It is all hand made. The down tube and seat tube are hollowed with plenty of thickness left not to disturb the surface when planed too much. As a result, it weights about 14kg in total. The thickness is uncertain though, I guess it’s about 6-12mm. It is bonded the half and half into one. I was also curious to learn that the trispoke-style wheels were originally known as “baton” wheels—the renderings of the Thonet concept has a set of HED’s top-of-the-line carbon fiber version—and that the clover-like construction is intended to “soften the ride.” Similarly, the cantilevered saddle intended for comfort, while the short stays speak to performance by “assuring the stiffness.” Check out the full-size images at BicycleDesign.net (more…) 
It makes such little cents You probably know that the U.S. penny used to be made out of copper, which was once inexpensive. As the cost of copper began to rise, it would have cost more per penny than the penny’s own value, so the U.S. Mint switched over to a zinc alloy. But the price of zinc has been steadily rising since 2005. Which is why U.S. currency is in the absurd situation it is now: A one-cent piece costs about 2.4 cents to make. A penny is 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, and that zinc ain’t cheap. The nickel’s got it even worse. This five-cent coin costs 11.2 cents to manufacture. That’s because 75% of it is zinc and 25% is, well, nickel, another expensive metal. Which means that a nickel costs more to produce than every U.S. bill from a one-dollar bill (5.2 cents) all the way up to a C-note (7.7 cents). The money math starts to make a little more sense when we get to the smaller dime (92% copper, 8% nickel), which rings in at a production cost of 5.7 cents. The quarter, which has the same ingredients as the dime, is only a slighly better bargain at 11.1 cents. Clearly the U.S. Mint needs to start researching cheaper alloys or phasing out the penny and the nickel. It’s true that the math is a little more complicated than it would be for pure product manufacturing; for example, while you’d quickly go broke selling a product for $100 that cost $240 to make, currency is a little trickier. The government has an obligation to produce and circulate currency because it enables commerce, so it’s okay if they lose a little in manufacturing costs, as its citizens will theoretically make it back up by creating wealth. But if we don’t do that fuzzy math and look at it in terms of straight production, in 2012 alone the U.S. government lost $58 million dollars just by making pennies. (more…)