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So they think they can advance from playing with plastic to making metal parts that are as strong as forged metals and electronics and so on.

I'm pretty sure you're not working in the 3D printing field, because those who are, beg to differ.on what's currently possible.

That's not going to stop them from doing it. In the next couple of years, a phone with a 4K display could be a real possibility. It won't be 4K^2, because the screens aren't square, but it will have the same effective resolution. They have to upgrade something to keep people paying high prices for devices. As technology improves, the same old stuff gets cheaper, and this creates lower profits for manufacturers as the barrier to entry gets lower. This is why you can now buy a laptop for under $300, and won't need to be updated before it dies. Contrast that to 15 years ago when I bought my first desktop machine, which cost close to $2000, and even then had to spend money on upgrades within a couple years.

http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

If only NASA had consulted Slashdot instead... think of the research dollars they would have saved :-)

So someone takes this, layers it with ablative armor, and suddenly you have a long-range, well-armored vehicle. What's the problem?

Taken directly from the DOTA2 source tree, the translation layer supports limited subset of D3D 9.0c, bytecode-level HLSL to GLSL translator, and some SM3 support. It will require some tinkering to get it to compile, and there is some hardcoded Source-specific stuff included.

Valve declared back in 2012 that OpenGL is indeed faster than DX11 even on windows - http://www.extremetech.com/gam... "The Valve Linux Team breaks it down on their shiny new blog: With an Nvidia GTX 680, Intel i7-3930k, and 32GB of RAM, Windows 7 and DirectX, Left 4 Dead 2 maxes out at 270.6 fps. With the same hardware, but different software — Ubuntu 12.04 and OpenGL — L4D2 scores 315 fps, almost 20% faster than Windows". The Dota2 community has grown so huge that tinkering these APIs won`t be any hurdle. Albeit,i personally feel that Values is essentially trying to bring back some of the old Russians/Chinese Dota Teams,who have yet not made any appearance in D2 because of the high graphics requirement in D2 compared to D1. All of this may change when Blizzard introduces their own D2.

You mean like this, from 2012, based on a proof of concept in 2010, and 10 years of prior research?

Note the use of the phrase "commercially viable". That is what IBM do. They could have bleated about one component of this working ... back in 2003 or similar.

While this was sorta-kinda true five years ago, a *lot* has changed since then.

The OpenGL specification has one big fundamental advantage over Direct X, namely, extensions. While extensions certainly aren't perfect, they do allow you to include new functionality in OpenGL - in DirectX, if you got a new technology, you have to wait for Microsoft to implement this.

Furthermore, OpenGL 4.4 has all features of DirectX 11 has and then some. It is about as easy if not easier to develop for, and is even faster[1] than DX11. DX11 is a good API, but it's getting outdated.

Shame that the XB One won't be able to utilize DX12...

Further reading: http://wccftech.com/open-gl-di...

[1] http://www.extremetech.com/gam...

And to bypass all your nifty security they decided to hack the firmware.

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

Don't blame the chinese, they were just paid to put it there...by you can guess who...

With a Rakshasa firmware any security you use is irrelevant.

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

Except don't blame China, they were paid to put it there.

Now the fake Cisco Routers that hacked the DoD, that was a VERY different story.

You think your Anon, but you are not.

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

This is correct, also almost all hardware is hacking you from the inside out.

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

And again, don't blame the chinese, they were paid to put it in there.

Now when they used the fake chips in the cisco routers for the DoD,
that is a very different can of worms.

When they own the firmware, they basically own the box.

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

And don't blame the chinese, they were paid to put it there for you can guess who...

I think all the devices with Rakshasa firmware such as cell phones are computers
are a honeytrap to get info to the NSA.

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

Forget the blame china routine, its obvious they were paid to put it in there...

Well the NSA has the backdoor keys to almost all the crypto on he internet.

With Rakhasha installed in most firmware they can also hack it from the inside out.

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

Most ppl want to blame this on China, but China was PAID to put it there....

> The Mac is now reliable thanks to BSD, but it is still only good for a few tasks.

I find this hilarious. A modern Intel Mac is fast, reliable, and while not cheap, a good value for the money.

I got a Macbook Pro because it runs EVERYTHING. I've installed Boot Camp with Windows, VMWare with Linux, Xen, UAE, Bochs, DOSBox, Mini vMac, Basilisk, SheepShaver, MESS, MAME, and it runs everything I throw at it. It is hands-down the BEST computer I have ever owned.

> The only reason it survived was publishers love it.

True for the most part. Publishers loved it because it solved the problems they needed solved, in a way PCs couldn't yet.

And when PCs kicked Apple's butt at desktop publishing nobody wanted to know because John Sculley had created the meme that it was the better machine for this task. Score 1 for the sugar water salesman!

> The Mac is now reliable thanks to BSD, but it is still only good for a few tasks.

I find this hilarious. A modern Intel Mac is fast, reliable, and while not cheap, a good value for the money.

I got a Macbook Pro because it runs EVERYTHING. I've installed Boot Camp with Windows, VMWare with Linux, Xen, UAE, Bochs, DOSBox, Mini vMac, Basilisk, SheepShaver, MESS, MAME, and it runs everything I throw at it. It is hands-down the BEST computer I have ever owned.

> The only reason it survived was publishers love it.

True for the most part. Publishers loved it because it solved the problems they needed solved, in a way PCs couldn't yet.

Personally though I have my eye on Android gaming.

Are you blind? Oh yeah, the Ouya (Jesus Fucking Christ, that name is gay as hell) did so great.

I was thinking about the movie where the NSA could spread a virus through the power supply.
I was also jus thinking how security researchers just found a virus that could spread by sound over disconnencted systems.
I then also realized that certain types of power supplies have consistent bad acoustic behavior - I can hear their caps.

Putting this together makes for a worm that on the PC checks the nature of the power supply, and can spread to phones/tablets/other PC by the power supply.

[1] http://www.extremetech.com/com...
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt02...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Sorry, the computing power difference between PS4 and Xbox One is far higher than 8%:
http://www.extremetech.com/gam...

And most of the recent cross-platform games have visually confirmed that.

Not to mention that this is probably the first time in consoles' history that the most powerful console is even cheaper than its direct rival (!). And why is that? Because of the kinect that NOBODY wants, especially after the NSA scandal.

It's a marketing disaster from MS, no excuse. They basically made any possible mistake that they could have done.

The battery tech is coming ...
energy density / recharge cycles - http://www.greencarreports.com...
fast charging - http://www.extremetech.com/ext...
not here yet ... but definitely on the way and not far off.

Here's one. Well, it is more of a super capacitor then a battery, but still

http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

Not ready for prime time – and maybe it never will – but it is a viable avenue to pursue.

But that's not where the profit is. That's not what's going to take AMD into the mid-21st century. If AMD sticks to that line of thinking, it'll go the way of Cyrix... and for exactly the same reason. AMD can't invest in a new fab plant because its cash reserves are too low, whereas Intel's pile of gold just keeps growing.

Dude, this already happened back in 2009 when they first spun off and later sold out of GlobalFoundries.

They are trying to claw their way into the mid-range market and undercut Intel.

Again it sounds like you dropped out of a time machine from 2009, when Thuban was aging and Bulldozer was supposed to be AMDs ace in the hole. Since then AMD has done nothing but dodge Intel selling all-in-one APUs using their graphics division and special case architectures for consoles, supercomputers, ARM servers and everything but going head to head with Intel. Their flagship CPU is still a Bulldozer refresh from 2012 built on 32nm, they've got nothing to compete with for systems that use no graphics (CPU crunching) or dedicated graphics (on board graphics irrelevant).

AMDs own roadmap shows there's no replacement coming in 2014, the only thing you'll get are Kaveri APUs. And the only thing selling them are the GCN graphics, otherwise they're almost out of the CPU business. Xeons now rule totally supreme over the once so good, but horribly aging Opterons. Sadly you're projecting what you'd like to happen with what is happening, AMD is not turning to fight they're running looking for something else to turn a profit on. It might be the best (or only) remaining choice for AMD, even if it sucks for us.

All that being said, the XP ATMs are perfectly safe. They are behind some rather crazy firewalls.

Nope.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173701-atms-running-windows-xp-robbed-with-infected-usb-sticks-yes-most-atms-still-run-windows

And another successful attack vector using Plotus http://www.atmmarketplace.com/article/221087/Mexican-ATMs-fall-prey-to-new-cyberattack

Successful malware attacks (both gaining access to the local cash and screen scraping and keystroke recording of customer information) through ATMs have been going on since 2008 and Diebold would most certainly be well aware of this, even if they are choosing not to bring it to your attention.

this: stretchy

The reason many people can’t read or watch a video in the car is that focusing in on the page or screen tells your body that it’s perfectly stable and unmoving. Your vestibular system, however, still senses the movement and vibration of the vehicle. This creates cognitive dissonance. Scientists believe that the nausea we feel as a result is an evolutionary adaptation to eating bad or toxic food. If one system is reporting movement and the other isn’t, it’s time to pull the big Reverse lever and send your dinner back.

So in short, the better they can match RL movement to the VR world (not just lag, but precision of movement and overall head location) the lesser the chance of nausea.

Looks like the intention is to make more efficient supercomputers.

While only tangentially referenced in that article, Knights Landing may be orders of magnitude more power efficient than current supercomputer cores.

Where are you getting Atom cores from?

From this Extremetech article, which has a slide speaking of the Knights Landing processor architecture having "up to 72 Intel Architecture cores based on Silvermont (Intel(R) Atom processor)"?

http://qz.com/107970/scientists-discover-whats-killing-the-bees-and-its-worse-than-you-thought/
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0070182#authcontrib
-----
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch's brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called Nosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.
Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they're designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.
"There's growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals," Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study's lead author, told Quartz.
Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides. ...
Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the countryâ(TM)s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And thatâ(TM)s not just a west coast problemâ"California supplies 80% of the worldâ(TM)s almonds, a market worth $4 billion.
----

This has been so obvious for many many years to the organic faring community... It is just another negative externality of conventional farming practice, and another example of market failure to account for systemic risk.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/162375-whos-killing-the-bees-new-study-implicates-virtually-every-facet-of-modern-farming

In general, safety studies are almost never done (including for human health) on *combinations* of chemicals (including human medicines). And studies of health effects of individual chemical's health affects often ignore secondary, tertiary, and further breakdown products.

The future of agriculture is probably indoors powered by cheap electricity (from fusion and solar) and managed by robots (including probably pollination).
http://www.howstuffworks.com/environmental/conservation/issues/farm-indoors.htm
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHA

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/169348-nasa-activates-622-mbps-laser-link-between-the-earth-and-moon

With the lazors on it, and 600 meg downlink these terabytes would fill up in no time.

The longer term plan for the LLCD is to use communications satellites to bounce transmissions between ground stations at 1.25 gigabits per second.

In other news, server lag from lunar orbit will remain a bitch for the foreseeable future.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-space-station-switches-from-windows-to-linux-for-improved-reliability

While I was digging around to try and find out what SCADA systems the ISS uses (which I never found), I did find this: international-space-station-switches-from-windows-to-linux-for-improved-reliability which has:

in 2008, a Russian cosmonaut brought a laptop aboard with the W32.Gammima.AG worm, which quickly spread to the other laptops on board. Switching to Linux will essentially immunize the ISS against future infections.

Tomshardware is known to be biased as they take in ad money and partnerships with Nvidia and Intel. They put in x87 non IEEE FPU tests where Intels own chips win and declare anything AMD/ATI a loser as a result rather than real world performance. They do not test the later versions of Skyrim which have proper FPU support as an example in their benchmarks.

For a more accurate benchmark click here?

citation provided:

http://www.extremetech.com/internet/92558-how-browsers-make-money-or-why-google-needs-firefox

I wonder how long the Linux kernel will continue to support all these other CPUs however. They've already dropped support for i386, since it's so ancient. I wouldn't be too surprised to see them drop support for some of the other really ancient ones too, such as Alpha. Heck, I'm surprised they haven't dropped i486 support by now. There's no telling if some of that code even works any more; I seriously doubt much of it ever gets tested since no one uses these old systems any more.

then the only choice as far as Linux goes is Debian, which never retires any CPU

Except i386; Debian is bound by what the upstream kernel supports.

This was in slashdot years ago. I can't find the slashdot link, but I did find this one. The idea is that you design a cpu focusing the reliability in the more significant bits, while you allow the least significant bits to be wrong more often. The errors will be centered around the right values (and tend to average into them), so if you write code that is aware of that fact, you can teach it to compensate for the wrong values. Of course this is not acceptable for certain kinds of software, but for things like multimedia processing, a small % error in the result wouldn't be appreciable, and over time, the image should keep averaging out the old errors while introducing new ones, assuming the software is designed for it.

How the heck is text messaging not included in this list?

SMS messages are piggybacked onto existing beacon probes between the cell network and the handset. They cost virtually NOTHING to the carrier. They are 99.9999999% profit. The fact that the general public isn't intelligently adopting iMessages and Google Hangouts for this reason alone is silly. I see the argument though... Short term, the price gouging that occurs in SMS and MMS messages will simply transfer over to the data plans. Long term, the moment SMS is no longer a contract-signing focus, the carriers will become competitive with the data plan fees/restrictions. That's how I see the future anyways. :)

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141867-price-gouging-it-costs-more-to-send-a-text-message-on-earth-than-from-mars
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/12/text-messages-c/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sethporges/2013/03/28/mobile-carrier-are-worried-about-free-messaging-apps-good/


Just sayin'

For those replying, I quote: "The other side of multitasking is the way apps run in the background. Apple added a strictly prescribed form of app multitasking a few years ago, but it is expanding in iOS 7. Apps will be able to update in the background based on intelligent scheduling at the OS level. If you always use certain apps at certain times, iOS 7 could allow them to be ready in the background. That sounds great, if it works.

Android has always taken a laissez faire approach to multitasking. You want to run that app in the background? Cool, it’s done. Hit the home button? No problem, the app is still there. This has led to some battery life concerns in the past, but more recent versions of Android have improved matters. You definitely have more power with the Android system, but there is potential for apps to abuse this system."

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/166828-ios-7-vs-android-4-3-apple-takes-giant-leaps-while-android-stagnates

There will come a time in the future thanks to the popularity of iPhones and flagship Android phones where they begin building them with support for all carriers.

Welcome to 2011. The iPhone 4S supported CDMA and GSM with one SKU.

LTE made the situation more complicated though with the 5C/5S

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/166356-iphone-5s-and-5c-the-best-support-for-3g-and-4g-lte-networks-worldwide

The point is that tablets can come out with full Windows 8, which would be a game changer. You'd have full PC functionality in a laptop. Buh-Bye both Android and Apple.

Yes...for only a 10-15 GB tax on storage space. Compare that to Android, at typically 1GB to 3 GB (barring greedy developers over-reserving space for their proprietary pre-installed bloatware...)

Even on a 64 GB device, that's still a 16-24% loss, and of course it's significantly worse on a 16 or 32 GB device unless you're willing (and able) to keep *everything* else on a micro SD card. Good luck installing all of the rest of those bloaty legacy Windows programs you 'need'...however if these prove viable, maybe they'll have a chance.

On the other hand, there is a very wide gap between what expensive SSD can reasonably deliver and what much cheaper spinning rust can manage. Spinning rust can manage a wide range of use cases.

It's SSD that represents the niche: small data for very casual users that don't do much of anything.

If this were even close to true, large corporations would not use NVRAM technologies to back their incredibly critical data stores. That "spinning rust" in a mid-sized 8-drive RAID-10 array can deliver roughly 2000 operations per second. One 2.4TB FusionIO drive for example? over 500,000. There's not even any comparison here. The size and cost of the SAN you'd have to buy to come even close to those numbers using traditional platters is on the order of multiple racks, compared to a single PCIe card.

Hard drives weren't always large and inexpensive. In 1996, it was huge news when manufacturers could advertise prices less than $1/MB. Not GB, MB. 1GB drives used to cost $1000 less than 20 years ago. Current high-end Intel 840 pros cost about $220 for 256GB. They're clearly getting cheaper at a pretty fast rate. And that's with NVRAM, which is probably getting phased out in favor of ReRAM in the next 5 years. ReRAM is even faster, has higher density potential, and is cheaper to produce. It leapfrogs NVRAM by almost two orders of magnitude, to the point where it's basically as fast as RAM.

No hard drive, RAID, or SAN could ever say that, no matter how much cache, how fancy of a RAID, or what interface it uses. We're entering an era where persistent storage will effectively be an afterthought. To see people still defending traditional hard drives in the face of that is odd to say the least.

The screen is 16:9, but they made the top and bottom of the case really thick so the phone ends up being quite long. It looks unusual compared to most other phones with 16:9 screens: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/galaxy-s4-vs-iphone-5-640x353.jpg

Disney, whom Apple has a great relationship with, demonstrated a technology recently that may change your mind about this.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/128715-disney-touche-turns-everyday-objects-into-multi-touch-gesture-recognizing-interfaces

the video postulates a future where you interact with your smartphone (or other wearable/implanted computer) by performing touch gestures on your own body. Grasp your own hands to stop the music, tap on your palm with two fingers to go forward a track, ball one hand to pop up the local weather on your Google Glasses HUD and so on.

This may not be available for an iWatch yet but it's on the horizon.

Splitting Microsoft along business/consumer lines:

MicrosoftBusiness: *WindowsDesktop (Profitable)

Profits for Windows Desktop are declining.

Declining would imply that sales were less than before. Last quarter sales were actually flat year on year.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153837-microsoft-reports-weak-windows-8-sales-in-q1-2013-says-it-will-respond-to-customer-feedback

Not necessarily. Sales can be flat or even rising and if margins shrink, then profits still decline.
Even so, a flat year-on-year is effectively a decline for Microsoft.

Splitting Microsoft along business/consumer lines:

MicrosoftBusiness:
*WindowsDesktop (Profitable)

Profits for Windows Desktop are declining.

Declining would imply that sales were less than before. Last quarter sales were actually flat year on year.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153837-microsoft-reports-weak-windows-8-sales-in-q1-2013-says-it-will-respond-to-customer-feedback

*WindowsServer (Profitable)
*WindowsServerApplications (Profitable)
*WindowsCloud (Profitable)
*WindowsMouseAndKeyboardWhatnots (Profitable)

MicorsoftConsumer:
*Bing (Lossy)
*Xbox (BreakEvens)
*WindowsPhone (Lossy)
*WindowsTablets (Lossy)

I predict that MicrosoftConsumer would quickly cease trading in the wake of this split, leaving only Microsoft standing.

You missed a new profit center - Android Racketeering.

Lol yes, i thought of that after, i guess that would be accounted in the business division, amazingly i also forgot the MS office (productivity) which should also be accounted in the business division

Several big sites, including Hulu, were discovered using this technique back in 2011.

Slashdot probably reported on it then, but I doubt any of the editors understood what they were reading.

The linked article refers to a start button, not a start menu. Furthermore, it would be odd indeed for Microsoft to add new features between the preview builds and the final build. The point of the preview builds, after all, is to test the real build. Adding a start menu at this juncture would be extremely strange from a software qualification perspective.

Also, if Windows 8.1 were adding a start menu, you'd think Microsoft would say so in their Windows 8.1 feature list.

Furthermore, from the Microsoft Windows 8.1 Product Guide:

With new desktop enhancements, including the new Start button, workers can easily transition between the Start screen and the desktop. IT professionals can also customize the Start button to open the Apps view, which provides a complete list of installed apps. This list can be reordered by category, date, or name, and desktop apps can appear at the front of the list. Windows 8.1 can also boot right to the desktop. In fact, you can start directly in any view– the Start screen, Apps view, the desktop, or even a single app.

Note that Apps view is not the start menu. Rather, it's the Start Screen's Apps screen. I.e. this.

The thing I can't understand is if the cross bracing is used to improve the partial tests why won't it stop too fast in the full frontal test.

The amount of cross bracing required to spread the partial impact across the whole front crumple zone would render the crumple zone completely rigid.

Ever worked with a collapsing stand? A brace can be designed to be strong enough to hold an elephant from one direction, yet collapse with a push of a finger in another. Just design the brace to provide strength side to side on the car, not lengthwise. It doesn't have to provide structural strength/resistance to impact. What I'm picturing them being used for is to transfer force. Picture two lines that represent the sides of the car. When an impact occurs, the lines collapse depending on the impact forces and their strength. Their strength is calibrated to protect the passengers up to a impact of X velocity, more or less without injury.

Obviously if you only impact ONE of these lines with the same amount of force it'll collapse faster. If you used the full distance for the prior test, the whole line will collapse, indicating penetration into the cabin and injury to passengers. If you fatten up the lines to the point that only 1 line is sufficient for the impact, an impact against 2 will result in too much shock to the cabin.

So let's add some bracing - put an X attaching from the front of the lines to about the midpoint of the opposite. Heck, you can have a number of such X's running the length. Now run the simulation again - when both lines are hit with equal impact, they collapse equally and the bracing does nothing. But if only 1 is hit, once the one line collapses to the point that it hits the bottom of an X, it has to start dragging the 2nd line with it, transferring impact energy to the other side of the vehicle. BTW, the bracing is designed to be strong tensile(pulling), not compressive force(pushing). It'll collapse easy, but pull hard. The second line will probably bend sideways, but this is still an opportunity to dump energy and can be designed for.

If you look at the video of the crash test you see that up to the front wheels is crushed which is where the frame starts there is not a lot of crumple space left, so I'm assuming they don't have much energy absorption left.

You haven't seen enough crash images of modern cars then. I've seen images of 'walk away once they cut you out' accidents where the wheels(and engine) had been pushed underneath the cabin. If the front wheels are still mostly in the proper spot they have like 2' left.

Take, for example, how the Volvo S60 did. Now, not the same test(still looking), but note how the wheel comes completely off. Want the no offset picture?

Also, small overlap test seems to be more about having the car push itself sideways a bit, keeping the cabin out of the impact, but allowing it to proceed past the impact point.

Also, found this: "Tesla determined it would meet the NHTSA front crash test with a 5-star rating and “Tesla then analyzed the Model S to determine the weakest points in the car and retested at those locations until the car achieved 5 stars no matter how the test equipment was configured.” In other words, Tesla expects to perform at a 5-star level no matter how much or little offset in the actual crash. Or better."

The solar cells cost is largely measured in the energy made to create it. Efficiency = output/cost. We just reached parity in 2010- that's pretty pathetic. And that doesn't include the costs of transportation, loss due to damage from hail, etc, and other such issues. Until this ratio becomes really large (10x), solar cells aren't much better than a battery- you put energy in and get it back out later.
There have been many promising technologies 'on the horizon' that are supposed to make solar cells cheap (made with little energy).
This is the most recent article of printable solar cells. I read one just like this 10+ years ago:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-05/17/a3-printed-solar-cells
Then you have the "new material" of the hour:
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517811/a-material-that-could-make-solar-power-dirt-cheap/
And all the other stuff, such as:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/163561-the-key-to-cheap-solar-power-may-have-been-discovered-over-150-years-ago
Until something radically changes, these 'investments' in solar companies are really just there to line to pockets of political cronies, like the 33 companies that made large donations to our president and received even larger 'investments' which were paid out before the company declared bankruptcy
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/18/president-obamas-taxpayer-backed-green-energy-failures/

We live with what we got now. That is life. But ...

Within a few years that will change with lithium-sulfur batteries if the lab geeks have anything to say about it.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/157525-new-sulfur-based-battery-is-safer-cheaper-more-powerful-than-lithium-ion

Even the new Kindle Paperwhite is meant to be used with a backlight, increasing the likelihood of headaches and eyestrain.

Nope. It's got a front light.

http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/137158-amazon-sheds-new-light-on-kindle-paperwhite-display