Ars Technica. Leaked document points to $299 “Xbox 720″ for 2013. Mating with Neanderthals is off-again, on-again. Understanding Japan's Nuclear Crisis. By John Timmer, Ars Technica Following the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan has been challenging.
Berkeley Earth project is back to re-re-confirm Earth is warming. Despite plenty of indications that the Earth has gotten warmer—like melting glaciers and ecosystems that are shifting toward the poles—there are a number of climate skeptics who simply don't accept the temperature records produced by three different organizations (NASA, NOAA, and the CRU).
Many of them pinned their hopes on physicist Richard Muller, who was also not convinced the professionals had gotten it right. But Muller did something about it, forming the Berkeley Earth project, and building a huge database of land temperature records. Building a supermassive black hole in under a billion years. Three decades of the Commodore 64. The BBC was kind enough to point out that one of the most significant early personal computers, the Commodore 64, went on sale in August 30 years ago.
For many people, this machine was their introduction to personal computing, and for two members of the Ars staff, thinking about the machine brings up strong memories. Running a BBS in real color. New fossils complicate human family tree. About two million years ago, the lineage that eventually produced humans underwent a significant transition, with species from the genus Homo appearing and eventually displacing their ancestors, the Australopithecines.
Pics, because it really is happening on Mars. Putting the breaks on climate change with… diamonds? As the emissions of carbon dioxide have continued largely unabated over the past decade, a number of people have given thought to geoengineering, or changing the environment in a way that tweaks the planet's thermostat.
Although people have suggested some exotic interventions—reflecting sunlight away from the Earth with orbiting mirrors—more serious consideration is being given to pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. But a new paper in Nature Climate Change suggests that focus might be keeping us from considering even better options. Sulfur is a major focus in part because we know it will work, since major volcanic eruptions provide a natural test of it. Wind accounts for one-third of new energy-generating capacity in US. In 2011, roughly one-third of the new generating capacity installed within the US was in the form of wind turbines, according to a new report prepared by the Department of Energy.
Putting the breaks on climate change with… diamonds? No computer required: The Doxie Go portable document scanner reviewed. One man’s trash: the state of modern waste. This week's edition of Science contained over a dozen articles on a subject that sounds deceptively simple: waste.
Human societies produce a dizzying variety of waste purely as a byproduct of functioning, from agricultural waste or discarded electronics to excrement. In a world of finite resources and limited fossil fuels, it's obvious that we have to make better use of our waste. But doing so isn't just a challenge; it's dozens of them. Organic waste Take agricultural waste. Mating with Neanderthals is off-again, on-again. Samsung attacks Apple’s expert witness over product similarity. An Apple-hired expert today argued that lots of consumers can't tell the difference between the iPhone and Samsung phones, or between the iPad and Samsung tablets.
The expert witness, Kent Van Liere, polled consumers to see if they could distinguish between Apple's devices and Samsung's, finding that a significant number could not. Apple argues that its "trade dress," the distinctive look of the iPhone and iPad—from their sizes and shapes to the design of their home screens and icons—has been violated by Samsung's various competing products.
As such, Apple is trying to prove that Samsung created products so similar to the iPhone and iPad that people look at Samsung devices and assume they were made by Apple. In addition to Van Liere's comparison study, Apple trotted out expert witness Hal Poret, who surveyed 582 people who had purchased mobile phones in the past year or were likely to purchase one in the next 12 months. Windows RT line-up starts taking shape, but questions remain. Microsoft has confirmed that Lenovo, Dell, and Samsung will all be producing ARM-powered devices running Windows RT.
This brings the total number of vendors supporting the platform to five: the three join ASUS, which announced its Tablet 600 earlier in the year, and Microsoft's own Surface. While not going into specifics, Microsoft's post outlines the broad parameters of the forthcoming Windows RT devices. There will be tablets, tablets with dockable keyboards, and laptops, with screen sizes ranging between 10.1" and 11.6", weights between 520 g and 1200 g (1.15 lb and 2.64 lb), and thicknesses between 8.35 mm and 15.6 mm. Battery life on the ARM machines is measured at between 8 and 13 hours when playing HD video. One man’s trash: the state of modern waste. From Altair to iPad: 35 years of personal computer market share.
Back in 2005, we charted 30 years of personal computer market share to show graphically how the industry had developed, who succeeded and when, and how some iconic names eventually faded away completely.
With the rise of whole new classes of "personal computers"—tablets and smartphones—it's worth updating all the numbers once more. And when we do so, we see something surprising: the adoption rates for our beloved mobile devices absolutely blow away the last few decades of desktop computer growth.