The case itself features a sizable 1500mAh battery pack that they claim can be charged by the sun in as little as three hours. It also has a mini USB to USB cable that allows you to charge from your PC or hook up other gadgets for a quick shot of sweet solar juice. The case is slated for release in August in both black and white versions for around $54. [Mobile Fun via SolarFeeds via EcoGeek]

The set has a contrast ratio of 10000:1 and a 20mm thick display panel. It requires about 30% less power than regular LCD TVs and gets its juice from one of Sharp's triple-junction thin-film solar cell modules. The modules are about the same size as the television's screen.

Sharp plans to market the LCD and the energy system as a pair and says that its product could be a hit with both people living off the grid and environmentally-conscious consumers. The company will be exhibiting this, and other energy-saving technologies, at the G8 summit on Monday. [Physorg]

The commander wakes the child up at 6 a.m., and prompts players to put on the helmet and hit a "roger" button to acknowledge their wakefulness. Then, they are ordered to count to 10 in five different languages: English, Japanese, German, Swahili and Malagasy. At that point, the player is "allowed to take off the equipment and start the day"—wtf?! Didn't Akira start this way? [People.jp via CrunchGear]

According to NASA, at its closest approach Solar Probe+ will be about 7 million km from the sun (image below). At that point, the probe's incredibly important carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures greater than 1400 C. Oh, and there's the incessant blasts of radiation at "levels not experienced by any previous spacecraft" to contend with too.
And those mysterious alluded to earlier? NASA spells them out thusly:

• Mystery #1—the corona: If you stuck a thermometer in the surface of the sun, it would read about 6000o C. Intuition says the temperature should drop as you back away; instead, it rises. The sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, registers more than a million degrees Celsius, hundreds of times hotter than the star below. This high temperature remains a mystery more than 60 years after it was first measured.
• Mystery #2—the solar wind: The sun spews a hot, million mph wind of charged particles throughout the solar system. Planets, comets, asteroids—they all feel it. Curiously, there is no organized wind close to the sun's surface, yet out among the planets there blows a veritable gale. Somewhere in between, some unknown agent gives the solar wind its great velocity. The question is, what?

"To solve these mysteries, Solar Probe+ will actually enter the corona," said program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "That's where the action is." No kidding. Just be sure to bring the SPF 10,000, little guy. [NASA]

Led by PayPal founder Peter Thiel and a Google engineer and Sun programmer, the Seasteading project aims to allow people who are looking to live independent of any government a chance to do just that. People will get a dinky 300 square feet of living space in a windowless tube floating in the ocean, but hey, there'll be satellite internet access!

Google's Patri Friedman has this to say about the plan:

"Government is an industry with a really high barrier to entry," he said. "You basically need to win an election or a revolution to try a new one. That's a ridiculous barrier to entry. And it's got enormous customer lock-in. People complain about their cellphone plans that are like two years, but think of the effort that it takes to change your citizenship."

Friedman estimates that it would cost a few hundred million dollars to build a seastead for a few thousand people. With costs that low, Friedman can see constellations of cities springing up, giving people a variety of governmental choices. If misguided policies arose, citizens could simply motor to a new nation.

"You can change your government without having to leave your house," he said.

What do you think? Would you live on a concrete island to enjoy smoking pot and downloading pirated movies without anyone to tell you not to? Personally, I like solid land and interpersonal contact a little bit too much to jump on board, but your mileage may vary. Graphic by Valdemar Duran [Wired via Gawker]

Yes, this whole Sun thing was a big fat hot excuse to put up some good videos. [NASA via BBC News]

Sun Microsystems has just received a $44 million contract from the Pentagon to do just that. They're to work on a way of connecting silicon chips via lasers, which, if successful, will increase chips speeds by a factor of thousands.

Computer scientists have long sought a way to make faster and cheaper computers by making larger chips on a single wafer of silicon, a manufacturing process called "wafer scale integration." If the Sun researchers' idea can be proved technically feasible and manufactured commercially, it would be possible to create more-compact machines that are a thousand times faster than today's computers, the company said. Each chip would be able to communicate directly with every other chip in the array via a beam of laser light that could carry tens billions of bits of data a second.

It depends on the type of device you use (laptops get 3 hours, TV gets "a couple"), and you can check on how much juice is left with the LED display on the side. Unfortunately, it's $3600, but if you love working outside on your deck in the summer, this does seem pretty awesome. One warning though: don't sprawl your papers and crap all over the table when you're working. [Treehugger]

SEE Toys, whose name is an acronym of "safety, ecology and economy," will each have a hand crank that will charge up the batteries. Dynafly, one of the toys with a light-up white eyes and a smoldering red tail, laughs and buzzes when cranked. The toys will range in price from $20 to $30.

Next up, Yu will be designing a cell phone charger that feeds off both the laughter and tears of children. At least, that's what he should be working on. [Product Site via Detroit News]

Lionel Menchaca, Dell's Digital Media Manager, wrote:

"We apologize for having to do this, truth is that we do not have a line of sight to enough supply of quad-core QX6800 processors that can tolerate the Bin+3 overclocking. Since it already runs at a 2.93GHz speed, there's a limited headroom to overclock. It just comes down to physics—a design can only tolerate so much voltage. Note that we are still offering the QX6800 Extreme Edition on the air-cooled XPS 720 Red system running at a lower clock speed of Bin+1 or (3.2GHz).

The entire solar kit carries a hefty $478.95 pricetag. If that's too much for you, it's worth noting that the XPower Powerpack 300 Plus and Sunlinq Portable Solar Panel are available separately, for $119.95 and $359.99, respectively. The XPower Powerpack 300 Plus alone is handy enough, as it doesn't need the panels to charge and can even jump-start cars and fill a tire up with air. [Earthtech]

Also called ALAVs, (Autonomous Lighter than Air Vehicles) the Blubber Bots sense and react to movement, sounds, lights and heat, thanks to the Sun SPOT chips that power their brains, which hang down beneath them*. LED lights and cellphone vibrators allow them to communicate amongst themselves—and, as the video shows, with us.

You can have your own for just $99, but you have to assemble it yourself. Alternatively, get yourself to LA and have Jed Berk himself help you out for $185.

*Another way in which they are similar to man.

Product Page [Maker Store via "Oh Gizmo]

Once charged, it will take you a perfunctory 13 miles at 30mph. Yes, that's thirteen miles, which means that if you travel from the northernmost point of Manhattan island, you still won't reach the southernmost tip without having to get off and push.

The bike's solar panels emerge when it is stationary (does that mean you risk decapitation if you stop to admire the view?) Keeping with most electric bikes, its brushless motor is stored in the front wheel, saving on transmission components.

Sun-Red designs solar bike [UberGizmo]

The Sanyo PLC-XF47 (who comes up with these names?) is boasting a ridiculously high 15,000 lumens. We can barley fathom how bright that must be, although what were they thinking keeping it at 1024x768? If we're going to spend 30 grand on a projector it better at least be 1920x1080. Although they did add wireless HD streaming. Look for it in October if you've got $30,000 lying around, or a bunch of credit cards taunting you.– Benjamin Longo

Sanyo debuts "world's brightest" PLC-XF47 and PLC-XP100L projectors [Engadget]

But if you read into it and consider InfoWeek's note, "upon further questioning, Croll would only confirm that Apple had never said ZFS would be a part of Leopard," in conjunction with the fact that it was Sun's CEO making the slip, not some random peon, it seems fairly likely that something Sunny was cooking in the Apple kitchen. It's not like they're down and out in any case—Apple's probably already kicking around stuff for 10.6 – Matt Buchanan

Apple Says No Sun File System For Leopard [InformationWeek]

[Updated]

"ZFS is not the default file system for Leopard. We are exploring it as a file system option for high-end storage systems with really large storage. As a result, we have included ZFS — a read-only copy of ZFS — in Leopard."

Jump to the middle of the video to see the effects of the heavy shaking. The earthquake was simulated using a six-degrees-of-freedom hydraulic platform and data collected at Northridge, CA on January 17, 1994. Even while hell broke loose, everything kept running and the only failures were caused by "power cords coming out." Not bad at all for a container full of server racks. – Jesus Diaz

Product page [Sun via SiliconNews]

If you really care, head on over to ZFS's homepage or wikipedia's comparison of file systems and see for yourself. Don't blame us if you get fired for falling asleep at work. – Jason Chen

ZFS To Become Default File System In Leopard [Macrumors]

The Solar Impulse is Bertrand Piccard's 100% solar-powered airplane. He plans to go around the world with it in 2011, but the pilots have started training today using an extremely complex virtual simulator that takes into account all its features. It has a 262-feet wingspan full of photovoltaic cells that power its 40kW engines. The Solar Impulse can move its 4,409-pounds carbon-fiber body at an altitude of 39,370-feet, while maintaining a 43.9mph average speed. Full specs and a picture of the team after the jump.

Solar Impulse Full Specs

AERODYNAMICS
Maximum altitude 12,000m
Outside temperatures + 80°C to -60°C
Maximum weight 2,000 kg
Average speed 70 km/h
Wingspan 80 metres Slightly more than the Airbus A380, in order
to minimise induced drag and to provide a
maximum surface area for the solar cells

PROPULSION
Power of the engines Max. 40 kW The average engine power made available
over a 24h period by the sun is comparable
to that used during the first flight by the
Wright brothers in 1903 (12 CV)

COCKPIT
Environmental control
and life support system
Elimination of CO2 and humidity
generated by the human body
1 single pilot
Man-machine interface device Under development To provide the pilot with more detailed
information about the airplane's flight
characteristics than normally available on
traditional airplanes. This information could
be derived by other senses than sight and
hearing

MATERIALS & STRUCTURE
Essentially constructed from
carbon fiber.
sandwhich structure Using very thin materials with the lowest
possible densities
ENERGY MANAGEMENT
Batteries lithium , weight of 450 kg,
from 200 Wh/kg battery capacities

Solar cells monocrystaline silicon, 130 micron
thickness, about 250 m2 surface,
min 20 % photovoltaic efficiency
Ultra-thin and integrated in the wings

GLOBAL OPTIMISATION
Human parameters Sleep management, MMI
Energy parameters Capturing and channelling of the
energy, battery, engines

Trajectography parameters The met, hours of sunshine Several hundreds, even thousands of
parameters to coordinate in order to
develop a machine evolving in an area of
flight still unexplored today. In order not to
penalize the needs of propulsion, success
can only be achieved through optimizing
output and reducing overall weight.
Safety parameters Reliability
Mechanical parameters materials, mass
Aerodynamic parameters Quality of flight, loads, performance,
aeroelastic phenomena
Thermic parameters Radiation

With those features, the Solar Impulse won't beat the pants out of the Dreamliners, but it sure is one stunning airplane and one amazing challenge for Bertrand Piccard and his Number One co-pilot, André Borschberg. – Jesus Diaz

Press Note [Solar Impulse via BBC News]
Flash animation [Solar Impulse]

Here Comes the Sun Conference [SF Gate]

You can buy different amounts of beads depending on your needs—but get enough and you can have a Japanese Mardis Gras anywhere. Politely asking women to take off their tops is how they do it. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Rakuten via Gearfuse via Techie Diva]

The Sun reports on a British mechanic who has had relations with "more than 30 different models in 20 years — plus two motorboats and a pal's JETSKI".

Wow. Whether or not cars are your cup of tea, this guy is inarguable a stud.

Mechanic: I Have Sex With Cars [via jalopnik]

If you don't mind risking a moving violation, this is loaded with features. It has a DVD player that can also handle CDs and MP3s, an SD card reader for your fave media, a USB port for your laptop, a remote control and a TV receiver built in. All that displays on a 7-inch LCD 16:9 widescreen display that also has touchscreen capability. Too bad the audio transmits to your car radio via FM, probably resulting in noisy and static-y sound. A questionable value for $299. – Charlie White

Product Page [Gadget Universe]

Solar Powered Cell Phone Charges Free In Sun [The Raw Feed]

Still, he had some nice quotables that attack the music industry in a tone you usually reserved for seedy tech repositories like Gizmodo.

The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, "Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?"

You'll find that the Zune Planet orbits the music industry's Bizarro World, where users aren't allowed to do anything that isn't in the industry's direct interests.

Microsoft's colossal blunder was to knock the user out of that question and put the music industry in its place.

The Zune will be dead and gone within six months. Good riddance.

Zune Review [suntimes]

Google Blog [via Gizmowatch via Newsvine]

Our testing thus far shows no great risk of light interference when playing a game that relies on the pointer and sensor bar.

No problem here. Good job Japanese engineers! May you go out and get some sun once the Wii launch is complete. – Jason Chen

Nintendo Responds [1up via Kotaku]

What's even worse is that Essvik developed a mobile version. Instead of lighting up it just shows a yellow block that moves reflecting the sun's movement and position in the sky (jump to see the picture). Seriously, just look up or go outside.

– Travis Hudson

Digital Sun [WMMNA]