Category: Crazy

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From Ars Technica: Another tiny computer: VIA’s $49 APC offers Android, HDMI video out

Is that an Android computer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Taiwanese hardware manufacturer VIA has announced a new product called the Android PC System (APC), a seven-inch ARM board that ships with a custom version of the Android mobile operating system. The device will be available in July for $49.

The APC includes a VIA ARM11 SoC, 512MB of RAM, 2GB of flash storage, VGA and HDMI video outputs, speaker and microphone jacks, a microSD slot, an ethernet port, and four USB ports. It also reportedly supports hardware-accelerated video decoding. According to VIA, the board consumes only 4 watts when idle and 13.5 watts under maximum load.

The Raspberry Pi foundation’s $35 computer, which launched earlier this year, attracted considerable interest from Linux hobbyists and embedded computing enthusiasts. The foundation partnered with two manufacturers, but has struggled to meet demand for the product. VIA could help fill the unmet demand for a low-cost ARM system that is suitable for the hobbyist market.

from Ars Technica

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From Autoblog: Video: ABC: Thousands of rejected/condemned gas pumps in use, could cost you $$$

gas pump measurement

Most of us likely assume that the gas pump that is providing petrol is giving you the fuel that you pay for – no more or less. While that may be true in most cases, ABC News in Baltimore, Maryland proves that sometimes pumps do bad things to good people.

The report details Maryland state gas station inspections that have revealed over 4,000 defective pumps over the last four years. In all, that’s between five and six percent of the 40,000 gas pumps in Maryland, or way too many error-prone pumps for our tastes.

While our primary concern is that customers aren’t getting what they pay for, it seems the gas station owners are more likely to get the short end of the stick. The report claims that station owners are three times more likely to lose money than the customer. Scroll down to watch the ABC Newsreport.

 

from Autoblog

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From Engadget: Laser-toting MAV can find its way in tight spaces, might eventually hunt you down

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A perpetual weakness of MAVs (micro air vehicles) is their frequent need for hand-holding in anything other than a wide-open or very controlled space. If they’re not using GPS or motion sensors to find their locations, they can’t turn on a dime the way a human pilot would. Adam Bry, Abraham Bachrash and Nicholas Roy from MIT’s CSAIL group haven’t overcome every problem just yet, but they may have taken combat drones and other pilotless aircraft a big step forward by giving them the tools needed to fly quickly when positioning isn’t an option. Uniting a laser rangefinder with an existing 3D map of the environment — still ‘cheating,’ but less dependent — lets the prototype flyer find the distance to nearby obstacles and steer clear even at speeds that would scare any mere mortal MAV. Ideally, future designs that can create their own maps will be completely independent of humans, making us think that MIT’s references to “aggressive” autonomous flight are really cues to start hiding under the bed.

 

from Engadget

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From Technology Review RSS Feeds: Antimatter Propulsion Engine Redesigned Using CERN’s Particle Physics Simulation Toolkit

Latest simulation shows that the magnetic nozzles required for antimatter propulsion could be vastly more efficient than previously thought–and built with today’s technologies

Smash a lump of matter into antimatter and it will release a thousand times more energy than the same mass of fuel in a nuclear fission reactor and some 2 billion times more than burning the equivalent in hydrocarbons.




from Technology Review RSS Feeds