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Also on IBM’s cat-sized-brain-simulation materials list: 143 terabytes of RAM, miles and miles of cabling, a million watts of electricity, 6675 tons of air conditioning equipment, and an acre of floor space. Cats: they’re kinda dumb. They only seem smarter than dogs because they’re not so friendly, and our society judges kindness harshly. It’s true!…
In the future, quantum computers will accomplish in seconds what would take years with our best computers today. Physicists at NIST have made a significant leap towards this goal by demonstrating the first “universal” programmable quantum information processor. In other words, this is the first time anyone has developed a processor that can handle any…
You know those faux-retro plastic cameras you see at stores like Urban Outfitters? The ones skinny people in skinny jeans use to take pictures of themselves dancing, or looking very serious, but not really? This is that, as a projector. The HypnosEye throws up a few red flags right out of the gates: Instead of…
The New Oxford American Dictionary declared “Unfriend” the word of the year. It beat out hashtag, netbook and sexting, among other nominated words. Oxford defines the verb as: “To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.” I think they should include offline usage, too, like when you stop calling…
This morning, Ron van der Ende left me speechless with this. They are not pasted in Photoshop. They are not giant tapes. They are not even painted. They are bas-relief mosaics made with old wood cuts. There are more: According to Ron van der Ende: I collect old doors and stuff. Old painted wood that…
When the Droid was shipped, it was plagued with a lousy autofocus bug. But then, it magically seemed to fix itself. Did Verizon secretly update all the phones from afar? Nope. The explanation is much weirder than that. There’s a rounding-error bug in the camera driver’s autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus…
I prefer a rub down with the real thing, myself, but this $12 plastic USB burger massager, with heat, will have to do until my next quarter cow is delivered. From Brando, natch. [Brando]
The next version of the best-selling software of all time, Microsoft Office 2010, is finally available in beta today. Get used to the new Office: We’re all going to use this stuff at some point or another. There’s a lot new about Office 2010: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook all come with evolved UIs, taking…
Bag-based? Sack-based? Balloon-based? Balloon-boy-based? There’s no shortage of ways to describe Microsoft Research‘s new tactile interface concept, which lets people interact with prods, pokes, massages and squeezes instead of clicks or taps. The bag you see above isn’t actually the core component of interface device—that’d be the sensor tile at its base, which generates and…
We reviewed Acer’s 3D laptop not so long ago. We found it fun, but reeking of gen 1 quirks. Now Laptop Mag has played with a new 3D laptop by Asus and found it to be pretty fantastic. The Asus G51J 3D is the first laptop to feature NVIDIA’s new 3D vision technology, and it…
Shortlisted in Designboom’s Green Life competition, the conceptual Dancepants Kinetic Music player would “motivate you to move your feet in order to hear your music.” Better shuffle about while taking that breather, or no pump-up tunes for you. “And as long as you keep running or dancing you can be sure you won’t run out…
231 intricate parts go into the design of this 2.2-pound ball of crystal excess. The spiral is fashioned from white gold and 25 jewels. It can be yours from Hermés Paris for just $560,000. Ahh, crap. [Hermès via SlashGear]
At last, after being blowed a billion times, it’s the iPhone’s turn. Believe it or not, there’s a new application for the iPhone that uses its speaker to blow air. No peripherals. No attachments. Check the video for yourself. https://gizmodo.com/blow-virtual-kisses-with-happy-dangy-diggy-5341013 The developers say that you can use it to “blow out candles, herbs, and refresh…
I wasn’t blessed with a modicum of sports talent, but I can get behind this idea: cheating. Baseball King Balls are specially designed polyethylene baseballs from Japan. By making adjustments to that band in the center of each ball, you can alter their aerodynamics, thereby throwing a sinker, curveball, knuckleball, riser, or screwball at will…
It will be some time before it reaches couch potatos’ hands, but NEC’s new TV remote prototype promises eternal power and no battery changes. Ever. How so? It doesn’t use any. How is this sorcery possible? According to the witches and wizards at NEC Electronics and Onryoku Hatsuden, their new remote generates electricity when the…
These JSDF shades have apparently been endorsed by the Japanese military because they won’t fracture even if struck at 106mph by a 6.5mm (0.3-inch) diameter object. Not quite bulletproof, but the picture looks cool. The Japan Trend Shop also says the 2mm-thick lenses wouldn’t shatter, even if a 500g 1.1-pound shaft of iron is dropped…
I trust a mole more than a company spokesperson any day, but Microsoft has officially denied the Project Natal “impulse buy” pricing with 14 games by offering a simple “[the alleged leaks] weren’t accurate, they were rumors.” [Gamesindustry via Kotaku] https://gizmodo.com/leak-project-natal-shipping-in-november-2010-with-14-g-5402077
It’s only intended for recreational use, but this feels like another step towards a real-life tricorder. A new start-up called RidRx is selling an adapter that connects stethoscopes to the iPhone/iPod touch, and uses their app for fancy spectral imaging. https://gizmodo.com/one-day-this-will-be-remembered-as-the-first-real-tric-5403126 You’ll need to attack your old stethoscope with a pair of scissors to make…
At an official N900 meet-up in London last night, the Maemo marketing team appears to have let slip that Nokia will use the Linux-based OS instead of S60 on all its future flagship N-Series handsets. About time, no? The S60 5th edition OS (as used on the N97 and N97 mini) might be mature, but…
At just 0.78-inches thick, Casio claims the 12.1-megapixel EX-G1 is the world’s slimmest ruggedized camera. The first in a new Exilim G line, it has a reinforced 2.5-inch rear LCD, non-extending 3x optical zoom lens, microSDHC expansion, and intelligent autofocus. Essentially, the EX-G1 is the type of camera you’d take with you when you go…
