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From Autoblog: Official: 2013 Chevy Malibu’s turbo four rated at 269 HP, 0-60 in 6.3 seconds

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2013 Chevrolet Malibu

We weren’t exactly smitten with the 2013 Chevrolet Malibu Eco when we got the chance to tae one out for a spin, thanks in part to the eAssist wizardry aimed at improving the vehicle’s fuel economy. With a lackluster drivetrain, regenerative brakes and low rolling resistance tries, the Malibu Eco simply isn’t capable of keeping its head high among the competition. Even so, we were told to wait for the Ecotec 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder set to debut this year. Now we know why. According to General Motors, the engine is good for 269 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque. More importantly, all that torque comes on at a very low 1,700 rpm.

The direct-injection engine helps the Malibu hit 60 mph in a scant 6.3 seconds. Trust us when we say that’s an improvement over the Eco model. While there’s no word on fuel economy, we would expect the engine to return well better than the 17 mpg city and 26 mpg highway supplied by the outgoing 3.6-liter V6, an engine that was only good for 252 horsepower.

This isn’t the first time GM has dabbled with a turbocharged four-cylinder. The company supplied buyers with a 2.0-liter Ecotec in vehicles like the Pontiac Solstice GXP, HHR SS and Cobalt SS that put out 260 horsepower. See belowfor the full press release.

Continue reading 2013 Chevy Malibu’s turbo four rated at 269 HP, 0-60 in 6.3 seconds

2013 Chevy Malibu’s turbo four rated at 269 HP, 0-60 in 6.3 seconds originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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From Technology Review RSS Feeds: The NSA Builds a Super-secure Android Device

The prototypes, code-named “Fishbowl”, make encrypted calls, and may be emulated by handset manufacturers.

The US National Security Agency has modified Google’s Android operating system to create smart phones that use powerful encryption to protect every call. The “Fishbowl” devices were announced today at the RSA security conference in San Francisco by Margaret Salter, the agency’s Technical Director, who said she hoped to encourage companies to adopt some of ideas used in the system.




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From Ars Technica: Holey chip! IBM drills holes into optical chip for terabit-per-second speed


IBM researchers have built a prototype optical chip that can transfer a terabit of data per second, using an innovative design requiring 48 tiny holes drilled into a standard CMOS chip, facilitating the movement of light. Much faster and more power-efficient than today’s optics, the so-called “Holey Optochip” technology could enhance the power of supercomputers.

Optical chips, which move data with light instead of electrons, are commonly used for interconnects in today’s supercomputers and can be found in IBM systems such as Power 775 and Blue Gene. Optical technology is favored over electrical for transmitting high-bandwidth data over longer distances, which is why it’s used for telecommunications networks, said IBM Optical Links Group manager Clint Schow.

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From Ars Technica: Zemlin praises $25 Linux computer: a Windows license costs more than four Raspberry Pis


In a blog post written this morning, Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin praised the Raspberry Pi foundation’s $35 Linux computer, which met tremendous demand when it launched this week. In his blog post, Zemlin discussed the important role that the Linux platform plays in enabling innovation around low-cost computing.

The Raspberry Pi foundation launched with the aim of building an inexpensive system that could be used to teach computer programming to young students. They developed a pair of bare ARM boards priced at $25 and $35 that include a 700Mhz ARM11 CPU and a 256MB of RAM. The devices are roughly the same size as a deck of playing cards.

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From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Video: Microsoft IllumiShare Lets You Play Remotely With Physical Objects

Microsoft IllumiShare Microsoft

IllumiShare, from Microsoft Research (also responsible for holodesks), is a system to allow two people to interact with various objects remotely. It gives cooperative activities like taking notes or creating documents a physicality: You’re not typing in Google Docs, you’re actually writing with ink and paper. Or playing cards with real cards, only your partner is on the other side of the world.

The IllumiShare is really just a cool implementation of a combined projector and camera. When two of them are communicating, each one records what it sees while simultaneously beaming that video to the other IllumiShare setup and projecting what it receives from its brother. Since it uses a regular camera, you can use physical objects like a pen and paper, or cards, or dice, as shown in the video below.

The drawback is that compared to a completely digital experience, you can only control the physical objects that are actually in front of you. So no, this doesn’t allow you to reach through a wrinkle in space-time to manipulate your friends’ cards. But it looks pretty seamless and probably wouldn’t even be all that expensive to make. Microsoft hasn’t implied any release date for it, though.

[via The Atlantic]

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now