Free Republic

It's not just about doping anymore. 60 Minutes reports on hidden motors in bikes -- and how magnets are being used to reinvent the wheel

It will not be Apple after all Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn means that the software giant is on track to become the world’s first trillion dollar company. Equities.com Analyst Michael Markowski claims that Microsoft will reach that threshold before other big companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. He thinks that Vole will use LinkedIn to become a leader in social media and the emerging crowdfunding industry. Equities.com Analyst Michael Markowski claims that Microsoft will reach that threshold before other big companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. He thinks that Vole will use LinkedIn to become a...

I have to admit that I am cringing even as I key this in, but there are some very good reasons why many in tech are actually welcoming the incoming administration of Donald Trump. I spent the last few weeks talking to a range of Silicon Valley leaders, all of whom will only talk off the record, because, well, Trump. All of them to a person were against him, some even voicing public opposition, during the campaign, and they all lent strong to tepid support to Hillary Clinton. That said, most indicated that they are seeing what they consider some...

A research team at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has created a transistor with a working 1-nm gate. Lead by faculty scientist Ali Javey, the team says they have thus broken a "major barrier in transistor size" to create the "Smallest. Transistor. Ever."Conventional semiconductor materials will hit a 'brick wall' at 5nm, simply down to the laws of physics, think scientists. However, thanks to the choice of cutting edge materials, the Berkeley Lab team has gained a lot more room for miniaturisation. As described by the Berkeley Lab Blog, the key to the creation...

<p>It was dark and cold that night I stomped down Broadway, talking to my then-boyfriend-now-husband about my feelings. I am always talking about my feelings, and he is always listening. He “mhm”s at the right places and doesn’t interrupt and sometimes says good things at the end. Sometimes he says wrong things, and then I have to explain why those things are wrong, taking us down an emotional tangent that is frustrating and exhausting, but he’s trying to be helpful, I tell myself and breathe. Bless his little heart.</p>

Process node scaling is becoming very expensive Carbon nanotubes have long been proposed as a significant substrate replacement to transform the chip design industry as we know it. They can operate using substantially less electrical charge and are six to ten times faster than silicon, yet due to their incredibly small size they have proven difficult to work with. The search for silicon alternativesOver the past 62 years since the first working silicon transistor was made at Bell Labs, companies have used different doping concentrations to influence electron mobility on circuit designs. But over the past half-decade, the industry...

IBM Corp. is beefing up its cognitive computing efforts with the launch of a new system-agnostic platform called Project Intu that’s designed to enable what it calls “embodied cognition” in a range of devices.In IBM’s parlance, “cognitive computing” refers to machine learning. The idea behind Project Intu is that developers will be able to use the platform to embed the various machine learning functions offered by IBM’s Watson service into various applications and devices, and make them work across a wide spectrum of form factors.So, for example, developers will be able to use Project Intu’s capabilities to embed machine...

Project Intu gets into embodied cognition The ever-shrinking Big Blue is improving its cognitive computing efforts with the launch of a new system-agnostic platform called Project Intu. Intu aims to put “embodied cognition” in a range of devices. Developers can use the platform to embed the various machine learning functions offered by IBM’s Watson service into shedloads of form factors – from avatars to drones to robots and just about any other kind of 'Internet of Things’ device.This will allow devices will be able to “interact more naturally” with users via a range of emotions and behaviours, leading to...

Anyone tasked with handling the way data is moved around a processor deserves praise. It takes time, dedication and skill to design something that not only works appropriately and for all edge cases, but also can run at speed and seamlessly for software. The topic of interconnects has featured regularly over recent years, with cache coherent networks and unique custom designs entering both hardware released to the public as well as behind-the-scenes designs. This week sees the launch of the Gen-Z Consortium, featuring names such as ARM, Huawei, IBM, Mellanox, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and Xilinx, with the purpose...

Researchers at Penn State, the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company have developed methods to control defects in two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, that may lead to improved membranes for water desalination, energy storage, sensing or advanced protective coatings. For a two-dimensional, one-atom-thick material like graphene, defects such as small cracks or holes can make a big difference in performance. Usually, these defects are considered undesirable. But if the defects can be controlled, they can be used to engineer new, desirable properties into the material. "As long as you can control defects, you...

Hot on the heels of the closing of the deal that divests its semiconductor business and places it in the hands of Globalfoundries, the former chip making business of AMD that is controlled by the government of Abu Dhabi, IBM and its academic and chip industry partners have announced that they have successfully etched chips with transistors that are 7 nanometers in size – significantly smaller than current processes and extending the Moore’s Law curve one more step.It is a big step, however, based on a mix of new technologies that have not been tested in volume production before,...

October 4th, 2016 · No Comments · 2160p, Connected TVs, Digital Media Receivers, HDMI, HDR, Home Automation, News, screen mirroring, search and recommendation, Second Screen, Streaming Services, UHD (4K) Media Players, UHDTV  Google used its hardware press conference in San Francisco Tuesday to unveil the latest iteration in its family of Chromecast digital media adapters.The new Chromecast Ultra, which is billed as offering the most premium Chromecast streaming video experience to date, is designed to seamlessly link (along with other Chromecast units) to the newly announced – and Amazon Echo-like – Google Home omni-directional wireless speaker with built-in Google Assist.Google...

James Bareham / The Verge Google has announced Android 7.1 Nougat, which adds a number of features to Android 7.0 that launched earlier this year. Android 7.1 brings new features to all devices, but it also includes a number of special things that are exclusive to Google's new lineup of Pixel phones.The Pixel phones will have Google's new launcher, Google Assistant, a phone and chat tech support service, unlimited, original-quality backup for photo and video to Google Photos, and a new Smart Storage feature that automatically removes backed up photos and video when the phone's storage is full. They...

If you were to design a client operating system with the goal of being used by two billion people, what would it look like?We might soon find out what Alphabet’s looks like. Today’s announcement’s from Alphabet’s Google is expected to reveal "Andromeda", the merged Android/Chrome OS. Executives have been hyping today’s event as the most "significant" since the first Android device in 2008, and we already know they’re writing a new operating system from a clean slate. We can also have a good guess about what it looks like. Google’s goal for the successor is to unify the rival Chrome...

Hiroshi Lockheimer promises that the event on October 4 will be just as unforgettable as the one almost eight years ago, when Android 1.0 was presented. Meanwhile, every blog is talking about the Andromeda scene, the supposed successor to Android. We will give you an idea of what that could mean. Google Pixel C reviewNexus Pixel price and release date

Google’s new OS is expected to bring some of the desktop-like capabilities of Chrome into Android to form a super OS that will be able to compete directly with Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Veteran fans of thriller author Michael Crichton may recall that his career kicked into high gear with the 1969 release of a novel entitled “The Andromeda Strain.” The book described the impact of a deadly microbe strain delivered to earth from space via a military satellite.Tomorrow in San Francisco, Google is expected to announce the release of a new strain of operating system code-named “Andromeda.”...

Mh3>Just helping you out Tim While many people refuse to believe me when I complain about the Tame Apple Press which publishes stories as free PR for the fruity cargo cult, they might want to look at the news this week. Apple was about to launch its disappointing iPhone 7 which was having its clock cleaned by the Samsung 7. Then in the middle of it there was a problem with Samsung’s battery exploding on some of its phones. Samsung fessed up immediately – the problem was caused by a faulty battery and will be fixed within a couple of...

IBM scientists have created artificial neurons and synapses using phase change memory (PCM) that mimics the brain's cognitive learning capability.It is the first time the researchers were able to create what they described as "randomly spiking neurons" using phase-change materials to store and process data. The discovery is a milestone in developing energy-sipping and highly dense neuro networks that could be used for cognitive computing applications.

Less than a year late but half as good as the Korean giantIt looks like Intel’s process technology has finally narrowed the gap to Samsung, it is now less than a year. SemiAccurate thinks this is a bit of a misleading number though, if you look at the tech, Samsung’s process is still better.With the innovation in Intel’s Kaby Lake 7th Generation Core CPU line, the process improvements Intel brought to bear have been lost in the buzz. This is unfair because according to the presentations provided by Intel, they have finally narrowed the timing gap to industry leader Samsung...

*********************clip The tremendous success of Pokemon Go, which is based on augmented reality, shows that the augmented reality/virtual reality era has arrived and is poised to be huge. With research firm Gartner predicting that 1.4 million virtual reality headsets will be shipped this year and 6.3 million will be shipped next year, investors should look to benefit from this trend. In 2020, 45.6 million augmented reality devices will be sold, another research firm IDC predicted.********************************************CLIP*********************************