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those guns that shoot around corners. http://www.gizmag.com/go/2576/

Gorgon Stare?

I-Ball?

Firefly?

Gorgon Stare?

I-Ball?

Firefly?

...and make it economically? The scientists are conjecturing, based on observations from an inelastic neutron scattering experiment on activated carbon coated with a platinum catalyst, that a low pressure H2 storage system could be developed, but seem to acknowledge that it would be expensive. If they'd actually constructed a storage device, I might be less cynical, but this seems to be another case of the theoretically possible being interesting but not economically feasible. From the article:

The team also hopes to identify a catalyst that isn't quite as expensive as platinum.

For what it is worth, a similar low pressure system using rhodium to bind hydrogen was conjectured half a dozen years ago, but I can't find evidence that a working prototype ever emerged. Using a platinum catalyst is an expensive way to bind hydrogen. I remember enough chemistry to know that the platinum group of elements (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum) all have similar hydrogen binding abilities, but all seem to be fairly expensive to produce in commercial quantities.

on Slashdot. Ohh wait faggotry never really left. It is getting stronger than ever. Instant cameras are still made by Fuji-film and I am sure other companies. On a brighter note, if you want to read about this and other interesting stories before they appear on fagdot, you can check out this site.

There you will find twice the information and half the faggotry.

Looks like he's fantasizing about the forceful invasion of the North Pole and looting of Santa Claus' workshops!
Hopefully Pia Zadora will put an end to his evil schemes!

Looks like he's fantasizing about the forceful invasion of the North Pole and looting of Santa Claus' workshops!
Hopefully Pia Zadora will put an end to his evil schemes!

Looks like he's fantasizing about the forceful invasion of the North Pole and looting of Santa Claus' workshops!
Hopefully Pia Zadora will put an end to his evil schemes!

Amazing development from such a tiny operation! However, I recommend he employ a professional welder. The one rather important-looking weld he shows in a pic looks a little dodgy.

No offence, but how about looking at TFA? No need to read it, mind you. There's an image gallery with three pics, two of the device and one "action-shot":
http://www.gizmag.com/cheap-microscope-uses-holograms/19679/picture/141169/

Apple dongle doesn't support writing from an app as far as I know.
On the other hand, you could toss videos onto it and import them into the camera roll to play if I wanted, I guess.

There some other manufacturer that had a dongle that does more:
http://www.gizmag.com/zoomit-sd-card-reader/14115/

Anyone remembers the Cambridge Crude? I wonder if they'll have a working solution (heh) in 2013.

Here is the gizmag article: http://www.gizmag.com/alloy-converts-heat-into-electricity/19025/ Use that with the Thorium instead of a turbine. :-)

That's not how it works...your profile could be made accessible on others just the same as it would be on a centralized service, but your information would be privately controlled so there wouldn't be any oddly convenient privacy slip-ups. Here's a quick explanation:

http://www.gizmag.com/diaspora-open-source-social-network/15098/

What happens is the following: the thermal energy of the coffee gets absorbed quickly by the material, therefore cooling it down fast from really hot to a lower temperature. The material can store a large amount of thermal energy and releases it slowly so that the coffee stays at a constant temperature for much longer (gizmag article).

Actually, that article specifically mentions that PCMs are currently in use as building materials. Interesting.

Nothing new here.

Phase change applications were fairly commonly installed in houses back in the late 70s. Usually a liquid to gel phase change but some were liquid to solid.

The problem then as now, was finding something that changed at the desired temperature, because any time you have to concentrate the heat to reach the the temperature where phase change occurred you lost much if not all of advantage of using these materials. (You essentially ended up running a air-source heat pump to concentrate hot house air into the material).

Yeah, here's two more: http://www.gizmag.com/ravenskin-insulation-delays-heat-transfer/17056/ http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/research-topics/construction/microencapsulated.jsp

I think the second one looks cheap and interesting. They use a micro-encapsulated tailored wax which can be mixed into plaster wall boards, giving them the thermal capacity of a brick wall.

Yes, every material absorbs and releases heat.

The interesting bit here is something different though. I have never seen that someone wants to use a phase change material for buildings, but why not? For coffee cups this already works nicely. The walls of the mug contain a material that is undergoing some phase transition (liquid to solid, different crystalline structure, magnetic, etc.) at a temperature that is slightly below really hot coffee but still a nice drinking temperature.

What happens is the following: the thermal energy of the coffee gets absorbed quickly by the material, therefore cooling it down fast from really hot to a lower temperature. The material can store a large amount of thermal energy and releases it slowly so that the coffee stays at a constant temperature for much longer (gizmag article).

For a whole building this makes a lot of sense as well. It more or less acts as a large thermal reservoir, so that your wall temperature does not increase during the day and falls too much during the night. You could achieve a somewhat similar effect by using 20 inch stone walls but this might be a bit easier to incorporate into modern buildings.

I fell for the trap too
Here's a link to the story
http://www.gizmag.com/heat-regulating-building-material/19413/

http://www.gizmag.com/heat-regulating-building-material/19413/

Apparently samzenpus is too stupid to be able to do an href correctly.

Are you talking land value? In the desert, land is cheap. Are you talking about the amount of glass needed to make the "green house?" What would make the size of the base a deterrent?

Yes I'm thinking construction materials, not land value. I realize the land is probably useless for any other purpose.

Based on this picture, http://www.gizmag.com/enviromission-solar-tower-arizona-clean-energy-renewable/19287/picture/138318/ , it appears to have quite a bit of infrastructure. I'd be curious to see a cost analysis compare the amount of land used for this vs how much energy could be produced in the same amount of land using solar panels.

... or perhaps you haven't run a fluid dynamics simulation to see what peak energy they would have to deal with in a large storm (frequent throughout winter in this area.) Presumably they have. Also, the bulk of this particular system is made up of pumps and pipework back to shore, so even if you could replace the float part it wouldn't make that much difference to the cost. That said, it's still a relatively early system of this type so it's possible that they over-engineered it somewhat for the sake of making sure it worked.

How do you know the wife isn't the tech of the family?

We aim to please...

Even Rosie the Riveter isn't without options

But nobody notices Samsung's 19" prototype transparent flexible amoled screen prototype announcement on the same site?

What would you rather have. SmellyTelly or small portable rollup/flexible displays?

I had some other thoughts, but then I discovered this, which is pretty definitive:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/analysis_saab2007.pdf

It's an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study on the 2007 model of the car you described. If you check Figure 1 (page 4), they explicitly mention in the text that they saw the expected 25-30% worse "tank mileage" (i.e. miles per gallon), and Figure 2 just backs that up with additional tests. That said, Figure 3 (page 5) indicates that ethanol does indeed yield a better "gas-equivalent fuel economy" (i.e. how many miles you can drive per unit of energy present), though the conclusion (page 8) indicates that the improvement over gasoline is only 3% on the highway and 7% in city driving.

It's likely the article you linked was referring to gas-equivalent fuel economy (note that it says "fuel economy" rather than "mileage") when it cited a 15% improvement (though even that idea is hard to swallow). With language that vague, it's difficult to say if "fuel economy" meant mileage (miles per gallon), mileage normalized for energy content, mileage normalized for fuel cost, or something else entirely. Typical car gasoline engines get an average 20% energy efficiency (25% on the highway, but I'll ignore that for the moment). For ethanol to reach the energy output you described with the same volume of fuel, it would need to have nearly 35% efficiency under the same conditions. They simply don't do that yet, though Gizmag had a later article describing some technology that may allow engines using ethanol to do that and better eventually.

So I'll definitely concede that they have better fuel economy once you normalize their miles per gallon based on energy content or the cost of the fuel. But more miles per gallon? Definitely not.

Of course, this may just be another misunderstanding if you and I were using the word "mileage" in different senses. I'm using it to mean "miles per gallon", but if you've been using it to mean one of the other statistics I described here, then we're already on the same page.

I think you are getting close to understanding my thoughts on the subject. Gasolone has more potential energy, but you cannot use it all in a streetable engine because it would fail to start in cold weather, run rough, and would certainly require some sort of additives to improve the detonation characteristics. On the other hand, you can produce an engine that runs well, starts easily and gets better mileage using ethanol. Not because ethanol has more potential energy, but because it has combustion characteristics that make it a more efficient fuel.

Your comparison of best-tuned gas to best-tuned ethanol is not really workable, since neither ICE would be able to be driven on a daily basis. So far, the manufacturers have shown us that the best they can do with gas cannot keep up with the best they can do with ethanol. Theoretically, that should not be true, but theory often loses out to practice.

http://www.gizmag.com/go/3531/

The cited article states that in addition to making more HP and torque, the engine will get 15% better highway mileage when burning ethanol than it will when burning gas.

It can actually fly all night without interruption and then recharge batteries during the next day for the night after that: http://www.solarimpulse.com/blog/2010/07/08/keep-the-spirit-alive/ and http://www.gizmag.com/solar-impulse-aircraft-night-flight/15663/ (and obviously, the aim of this first prototype is to be a proof-of-concept and to carry a message, not compete with commercial airlines!)

Guy plays piano with his mind: http://www.gizmag.com/music-with-the-mind-brain-computer-music-interface/18489/

I would imagine that the lag between thought/intention and detection by the EEG device and would be too high but he plays some really complex and dynamic tunes.

PS. Technically even when you use your fingers, you're at the bottom of it still playing with your mind. :-)

Depends on how wide your definition of "this" is. Let's quote TFA for convenience:

Making electricity from the difference in salinity (the amount of salt) in fresh water and sea water is not a new concept. We've previously covered salinity power technology, and Norway's Statkraft has built a working prototype power plant. But the Stanford team, led by associate professor of materials science and engineering Yi Cui, believes their method is more efficient, and can be built more cheaply.

Depends on how wide your definition of "this" is. Let's quote TFA for convenience:

Making electricity from the difference in salinity (the amount of salt) in fresh water and sea water is not a new concept. We've previously covered salinity power technology, and Norway's Statkraft has built a working prototype power plant. But the Stanford team, led by associate professor of materials science and engineering Yi Cui, believes their method is more efficient, and can be built more cheaply.

How non-technical, and after how thorough of a look?

I'll just leave these here...

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-297432.html
http://gigaom.com/2008/08/31/dont-like-the-iphone-check-out-these-touchscreen-phones/
http://www.gsmarena.com/newscomm-769.php
http://www.telecomasia.net/node/5199
http://www.google.com/search?q=SPH-1300&hl=en&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jjfATeTDOIL30gHT_tXuBA&ved=0CC4QsAQ&biw=1680&bih=947
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=ET&p_theme=et&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EEF6B3EB0A8C768&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
http://cgi.ebay.com/SPRINT-PCS-PALM-OS-WIRELESS-PHONE-SPH-1300-DUAL-BAND-/180613037497
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2000-09-25/news/18143226_1_cell-phone-palm-os
http://www.geardiary.com/2006/11/30/the-palm-treo-700p-palm-os-smartphone-review/
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=1690
http://www.gizmag.com/go/2306/
http://www.google.com/search?q=sony+p900
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/10/13/lg.debuts.new.prada.phone/
http://www.esato.com/phones/compare.php?phone=433&cp=439
http://gizmodo.com/#!190670/cect-a1000-touchscreen-phone-with-1000-hours-standby
http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32133413.html?tag=lia;rcol

these aren't phones, but what the hell... they could still be mistaken for an iPhone at a glance...

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/handheld.html
http://www.suddenlink.net/pages/curtismc/palms.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_III

PCI Express slots? Thunderbolt is external PCIe along with DisplayPort. SATA? Thunderbolt is faster than even SATA 6G, and there's already a Thunderbolt hard drive. Who knows? Someone could come out with an eSATA card connecting to the Thunderbolt port.

It depends on whether you're going for clean air or energy efficiency. The gas guzzler will likely produce more emissions from running than building and running the Prius. PHEVs won't be economical compared to hybrids until gas is over $6.00/gallon. The only exception may be the Leaf after rebate. A solar roof on the vehicle to charge the batteries is better as the sun can't be taxed (yet). If you could average 5kWh/day from 16% efficient panels, that would give you 4380 free miles of driving per year, assuming the 2012 Prius numbers are accurate of 12 miles per 5kWh charge. If you could get 40% efficient panels, then the annual range goes up to almost 11,000 miles. 40% efficient cells exist as of over four years ago. A real advantage is that you could never be "out of gas" in a desert.

In the sense that retro is chic. Besides, the 80 megapixel camera won't fit in that small a case.

Wow, love the image of a possible ghost.

Nothing about that says "possible ghost" to me, but "tombstone in background with light on it" -- these people seem to be really reaching.

The few times I've tried to watch any of those ghost hunter shows it always seems like it's dramatized, or a bunch of people sitting around convinced that everything around them is proof of a ghost. "Zomg, the floor creaked".

Hard to say if it's a hoax, or people looking too hard for something, and interpreting everything they see as 'proof'. It's hard not to cynically think that someone off camera who is part of it is scuffing their feet or something.

I remain unconvinced.

Gizmag said so. http://www.gizmag.com/lithium-ion-battery-breakthrough-mit/11244/

From the links at the bottom of TFA, the British team already has a body on their 200mph steam car. Looks a lot cooler too.

The 2009 records by Inspiration were the first beat the 1906 record of 127 mph (204 km/hr) set by Fred Marriott driving a modified Stanley Steamer.

"Production" consists of 100 cars worldwide. That's less than one tenth of the number of EV1 cars produced.

Until I can buy one at my local VW dealership, it ain't real and it ain't relevant. The world is full of "someday I'm gonna make this".

In any event, I have serious doubts it will meet US safety standards. As for the mileage claims... a low cD and a low frontal area and all that are nice, but you can't cheat physics. It takes a certain amount of energy to move a car around, and there's no getting around that. Even a little 50cc scooter only gets a little over 100mpg, and we're being told a two-passenger car capable of going 100mph with a vehicle weight of 1750 pounds gets three times that? I doubt it. In fact, I'll just plain call bullshit; that figure has to include propulsion from a full battery pack. Show me distance traveled where the battery pack has the same state at the beginning and conclusion of the run while burning 1 gallon of fuel; THAT is the "miles per gallon" that can ethically be claimed.

All that being said, it's not a bad-looking car (as eco-pharisee-mobiles go). I'd like to see it succeed, but first it has to be real and it has to be honest. There's also the little matter than I'm 6'2" tall with a 36" inseam. If it only fits oompa-loompas like the Lotus Elise (which I absolutely do not fit into, and believe me I've tried), forget it.

Now we need a list of all the instructions on how to build all of those... Or be really dedicated and reverse engineer it from still frames from the movies like this fella http://www.gizmag.com/home-built-dark-knight-batmobile/16736/

Somebody got a little too creative with the infographics though. Call me old-fashioned, but I like simple graphs I already know how to read.

A girlfriend!

Try this. ;-)

I guess the problem with this kind of list is that _everything_ has an extreme. Pick something you like, and some millionaire probably has an obscenely expensive version of it. This list was mostly the extreme versions of things I have no interest in.

But .... but ... exoskeleton!! Powered freaking exoskeleton.

Of course, I'd need the bigger LandWalker version, but it comes with guns, so that's OK.

I read the article, but for some reason the only thing on that page I really want is Zipbuds.

some of us like ads. I found this one poking my eye and felt a strange compulsion to touch... I mean, click it: http://www.gizmag.com/zipbuds-keep-tangles-at-bay/17337/picture/126646/
As for the presents I'll just wait for the "Billionaire Going Bankrupt" sale.

a hands-free way to review radiological images

Hands-free, eh? I do not think that term means what you think it means.

Keep your eye out for Ion Torrent's Personal Genome machine. Reviewed on the same site http://www.gizmag.com/ion-torrent-personal-genome-machine-launched/17330/

"iPhone makes sniping easier", "Bullet Flight 1.0.0 – the US$15 iPhone app for snipers"... You'd be surprised just at how many ballistics calculators there are! There are, in fact, tons of places in combat where iPhones already have a foothold. And I'm pretty sure that a good bumper that covers the ports would make it sand-proof, too.

It's easy to be nonchalant about it when you don't like in Seoul. If war breaks out, Seoul will get hit by North Korean artillery nonstop. The other major concern is that China would get involved, and nobody wants to see the US and China going at it, either directly or via proxy. If it weren't for those two reasons, Kim Jong-il and co. would have been wiped out a long time ago. The only thing that could make those risks bearable would be if the alternative is an aggressive, uncontrollable nuclear state, and that's exactly what North Korea is becoming.

Nobody's on North Korea's side if they go to war, not even China. China's only interests in NK are, in order:

1) Prevent millions of North Korean refugees from flowing over the border to China (it's not like they're going to go to their other neighbor through all the robotic sentry guns.

2) Serve as a buffer between the pro-US South Korea and China's eastern border.

China will support Kim so long as he remains a posturing blowhard, but the moment he actually tries to invade--and triggers all those millions of refugees that China dreads flowing into their country--they'll turn their backs on him instantly.

You misunderstood.
There are 4 dimensions to the data captured by the camera:
http://images.gizmag.com/hero/3d360camera.jpg [gizmag.com]

1. The X axis on the light sensors.
2. The Y axis on the light sensors.
3. The radius of the cameras from the top of the dome.
4. The angle of the cameras from the top of the dome.

You are misunderstanding. There are only 3 dimensions to information being collected. There may be 4 dimensions needed to describe a particular array of cameras, but that does not magically create a 4D amount of information. (actually, you left out the 3 dimensions describing the direction of the focal plane and the focal length of the lens, the dimensions describing the imaging surface, the pixel arrangement, and other dimensions required to describe the camera array completely.)
Where more than two cameras image the same voxel, there is "redundant" information captured by the multiple cameras. But though the "extra" information can be used to increase the accuracy and precision of the 3D information gathered, that does not amount to an extra dimension. n*D^3 != D^4 (where n = the number of camera pairs used to stereoscopically capture 3D information from the scene.)

| You cannot simply add the dimensions, it
| depends on how you integrate the image data
| together. Us people who don't know very much
| call this integration "3D reconstruction".

You misunderstood. There are 4 dimensions to the
data captured by the camera:
http://images.gizmag.com/hero/3d360camera.jpg

1. The X axis on the light sensors.
2. The Y axis on the light sensors.
3. The radius of the cameras from the top of the dome.
4. The angle of the cameras from the top of the dome.

| "The image is 3D" - do you mean the real world
| is 3D ? The image, as you put it, is a
| projection from 3D onto a 2D plane and is most
| definitely 2D.

The light reflected from a scene is 3D.
If I know the light in a 3D volume,
I can calculate it forwards and backwards in time.

The same goes for light passing through a plane
during some time. Plane is 2D, while time is 1D.

So 3D is enough to represent all information in light. 4D is therefore a waste.

| Humans possess a stereoscopic vision system,
| each eye is capturing a 2D image at any moment
| in time. I expect you would call that a 4D
| vision system ?

I would call that stereoscopic vision.
It is just 2 times 2D.

| And the concept of Depth from Focus is not
| your idea at all, it has been around for a very
| long time.

I do not believe you.
You are welcome to disprove me by showing an
example of someone that have done 3D from a
depth change movie.

| Your other idea involving "somehow" doing
| something cannot be considered prior art.

Yes it can. I have worked enough with patents
to have seen it done.

| In the grand scheme of things an invention has
| to be realisable.

To me it is obvious that it is realisable.
I better do it. I had no idea that this concept
which I find so simple and obvious is so
incomprehensible and unfathomable to slightly
intelligent people.

Kim0+