Doug Engelbart, The Visionary Who Foresaw The Modern Internet And Created The Mouse, Dies Aged 88

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Doug Engelbart: The mother of all demos, showing the first computer mouse" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="478" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/douglas-engelbart-the-mother-of-all-demos-mouse-640x478.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Doug Engelbart, The Visionary Who Foresaw The Modern Internet And Created The Mouse, Dies Aged 88</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Doug Engelbart, founder of the Augmented Research Center (ARC) at SRI and inventor of the computer mouse, has died at the age of 88. Engelbart was one of the first great computer visionaries, and perhaps the first to envision a future where computers, and more importantly networks of computers, augment human intellect. To this end, Engelbart and his fellow researchers at the ARC devised prototypes — in the 1960s! — that could be considered the forerunners of the World Wide Web, Skype, multiple on-screen windows, screen sharing, and the computer mouse.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> In 1950, at the ripe old age of 25, Douglas C. Engelbart had an epiphany that high technology had the ability to expand and augment human intelligence. In 1962, after joining the Stanford Research Institute and founding the Augmented Research Center, this epiphany was crystallized into a treatise called Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. In short, the treatise suggested that we would all be a lot more creative, productive, and intelligent if we had a shared intellectual space. In 1968, Engelbart and his fellow researchers realized this shared intellectual space by creating the NLS (oN-Line System).</div> <div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_160463" style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; width: 650px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/emouse.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Doug Engelbart, holding his original mouse" class="size-large wp-image-160463" height="426" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/emouse-640x426.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;"> Doug Engelbart, holding his original mouse. It used two wheels on the underside to measure the X-Y distance traveled. The ball mouse was also created around the same time, by a German company called Telefunken.</div> </div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> On December 9, Engelbart and 17 researchers working with him at the ARC gave a 100-minute public demonstration of the NLS, which they had been working on since Engelbart’s original treatise was published in 1962. Around 1,000 computer professionals attended the presentation, which would turn out to be the first public debut of the computer mouse (pictured above), hypertext, and screen sharing with built-in video conferencing. This was in 1968, some 16 years before the mouse would be popularized by Apple and Microsoft, and<em>decades</em> before the arrival of the World Wide Web and Skype.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> At this point, it’s better if you switch over to the video below, where Engalbert himself, on stage at the San Francisco Convention Center, demonstrates the NLS.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <br /></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> If you don’t have time for the full 100-minute demonstration, you should probably skip forward to the 31-minute mark for a good overview of the NLS input devices (mouse and chord keyboard), and the 75-minute mark for the video conferencing and screen sharing/collaboration demo.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> This demo, which left the attendees awe-struck, would later be referred to by Silicon Valley dwellers as “the mother of all demos.” In an age when computers were very much still room-sized devices intended for massive computation, NLS suggested that computers, aided by networks, could be used for real-time collaboration between researchers. Looking back, of course, sitting at our computers that are connected to billions of other people via the internet and the World Wide Web, we now know how scarily prescient Engelbart was.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/engelbart-with-mouse.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Doug Engelbart at SRI, with the first mouse, in 1968" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-160471" height="300" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/engelbart-with-mouse-284x300.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="284" /></a>The ARC was funded by DARPA, NASA, and the USAF — and you won’t be surprised, after watching Engelbart’s demo, to hear that the ARC later became one of first nodes of the ARPANET, the precursor of the internet. The first permanent ARPANET link was between the Interface Message Processor (one of the first packet-switched routers) at UCLA and the IMP at SRI. ARC, still headed by Engelbart, then became the first Network Information Center (NIC). (See: Changing the world: DARPA’s top inventions.)</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Soon after the excitement of the NLS and ARPANET, however, Engelbart slipped into relative obscurity. Engelbart still firmly believed that networked collaboration was the future, while the rest of the world, including some of his fellow researchers at the ARC, were quickly shifting their towards <em>personal</em> computing. The ARC was eventually sold off a company called Tymshare, which was then acquired by McDonnell Douglas, and with each successive sale Engelbart’s influence waned. Disillusioned, Engelbart eventually retired from McDonnell Douglas in 1986, his vision of a networked intellectual space squeezed out by operational concerns and a lust for larger profits.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Sitting here in 2013, of course, we know that Engelbart’s epiphany wasn’t in vane. Thanks to the World Wide Web, invented in 1993 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, and continuing efforts in the realms of networking and interfaces, we finally have a network of computers and information that augments human intelligence beyond our wildest imaginations.</div>

Doug Engelbart, The Visionary Who Foresaw The Modern Internet And Created The Mouse, Dies Aged 88

Doug Engelbart, The Visionary Who Foresaw The Modern Internet And Created The Mouse, Dies Aged 88 Doug Engelbart, founder of the Augme...

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BitTorrent Sync Released: The Secure, Cloud-Avoiding Sync Tool You’ve Been Waiting For

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="BitTorrent Sync diagram" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bittorrent-sync-diagram-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>BitTorrent Sync Released: The Secure, Cloud-Avoiding Sync Tool You’ve Been Waiting For</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Perhaps the company’s most important innovation since its co-founder Bram Cohen released the BitTorrent protocol in 2001, BitTorrent Sync has now entered public beta and is available to download. Sync is a free tool that synchronizes files across all of your devices (Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Android, iOS coming soon), and also allows you to share those files with friends and family (a la Dropbox). Most importantly, though, Sync is based on the peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol, so your files move directly from one device to another, never passing through an insecure intermediary. Furthermore, every transfer is encrypted, and people can only access your shared files/folders if they have the correct secret key — and yes, this key can be a one-time secret, enabling some very interesting usage scenarios.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> BitTorrent Sync, as the name suggests, tackles one of modern life’s most pertinent problems: Syncing your photos, videos, and documents across all of your devices. First-party solutions exist, such as SkyDrive and iCloud, but these programs also save a copy to the cloud, and for various reasons, such as the NSA having access to Microsoft and Apple’s servers) and other potential security hazards, this might not be desirable. BitTorrent Sync uses 256-bit AES encryption and the BitTorrent protocol to safely and quickly move files between your devices. To share a folder, you create a secret key and input it into another device (your friend’s computer, your smartphone), and that device automatically discovers your shared folder — via DHT, PEX, local discovery, trackers — and starts syncing.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bittorent-sync-windows.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="BitTorrent Sync for Windows" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-161592" height="345" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bittorent-sync-windows-640x345.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> In the case that you can’t initiate a direct connection to another device, BitTorrent offers to relay the data through one of its servers — but the data is always encrypted, and you can opt out if you wish.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bittorent-sync-android.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="BitTorrent Sync for Android" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-161593" height="300" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bittorent-sync-android-180x300.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="180" /></a>Every folder has a different secret key, and only devices with that secret can see that folder. Furthermore, you can create read-only secrets (ideal for sharing materials with colleagues), and one-time secrets that can only be used once (so you can be sure that other people/devices don’t re-use the key to access your files). For mobile devices, instead of forcing you to email the key to yourself or painstakingly entering it by hand, Sync pops up a QR code that you can quickly scan. If you go ahead and download Sync (download links are below), add my secret key (AMUEYTPNG5KNOLVITUAE6L75CAVXT7VW7) and you’ll instantly have access to my directory of disgustingly dirty delights.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Beyond the basics, Sync also includes some advanced features that some users might enjoy. There’s a basic versioning system, for easy access to deleted and old versions of files. There’s one-way synchronization, if you want to push files somewhere, but don’t want any changes you make to be replicated. There’s support for NAS devices (such as FreeNAS based on FreeBSD), and a fancy web-based UI for such systems (and Linux).</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> There are lots of really, really cool uses for Sync. At its most basic, you could use it to sync photos between your smartphone and PC, or documents between your home and office PCs. Instead of using Dropbox or YouSendIt to share assets with friends or colleagues, you could just share the secret key. If you want to share sensitive files/photos/videos with an online forum or a loved one, Sync just screams to be used. For smaller, private online communities, Sync could even replace torrents — just share your keys, and let people directly download files from your hard drive.</div>

BitTorrent Sync Released: The Secure, Cloud-Avoiding Sync Tool You’ve Been Waiting For

BitTorrent Sync Released: The Secure, Cloud-Avoiding Sync Tool You’ve Been Waiting For Perhaps the company’s most important innovation...

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Google Accounts For 25% Of All Internet Traffic, Is Used By 60% Of Online Devices Daily

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Google traffic chart" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/google-chart-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Google Accounts For 25% Of All Internet Traffic, Is Used By 60% Of Online Devices Daily</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Google’s famous motto, disarmingly simple and forthright, is “Don’t be evil.” It has mostly managed to stick to this dictum, despite a few poorly worded end-user agreements, the annoying push toward Google+, and this tendency toward “sunsetting” beloved services like Reader. Through Fiber, the company is trying to force the telecom industry into lowering prices and increasing service quality, and through its very existence it is trying to make all sorts of important data cheaper and more accessible to all. Overall, Google is a power, if not for good, then at least not <em>not</em> for good. So why does the company still seem to give so many people the willies?</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Because, when it comes the internet, there’s Google, and then there’s <em>nobody else</em>. Even Facebook, with its lidless, all-seeing eye into our personal lives, can’t boast Google’s total dominance of the infrastructure of the internet. It’s not just Search, which in many people’s minds is almost a part of the internet itself, rather than a website. Google owns and operates some of the highest-bandwidth content sites, like YouTube and Blogger. It also runs some of the net’s most fundamental support structures, notably Analytics and the all but ubiquitous Google Ads. As of last year, Google and Google-owned properties accounted for almost a quarter of the 100 most visited sites on the net.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The internet analysts at DeepField have released an updated report on Google’s progression from being King of the Internet to basically <em>being </em>the internet. Their analysis in 2010 pegged Google’s share of all traffic at about 6%. Today, they estimate it at <em>25%</em>. Perhaps even more impressive, more than 60% of all internet-capable devices, from PCs to phones to gaming consoles, interact with a Google server somehow in an average day. The only service that pushes more data is Netflix, and that obviously represents a less dominant position overall.</div> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_162123" style="color: #333333; float: right; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; padding-left: 10px; width: 310px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/google-iowa-data-center.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Google recently announced that it will be expanding its Iowa data center -- no wonder, given these figures." class="size-medium wp-image-162123" height="224" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/google-iowa-data-center-300x224.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;"> Google recently announced that it will be expanding its Iowa data center — no wonder, given these figures.</div> </div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> There are a number of probable reasons for the increase. For one, over the last few years YouTube has begun hosting longer and larger video files, hosting in HD, and generally pushing far more data per visit than ever before. Google Docs has also enjoyed a renaissance since 2010, with a greater number of people using it as their de-facto word processing solution. In addition, Analytics is now dominant in both private and corporate hosting, meaning that even the most popular websites now farm out a few bits of information to Google with every page view. This probably accounts for the 60% number, bringing Google into the loop even when they haven’t been directly queried. Owning the most prevalent smartphone OSprobably doesn’t hurt, either.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Additionally, Google Global Cache has made the company’s operations much more efficient. The program was first tried in places like Asia and Africa (apparently with great success) and reduces the load on the internet “backbone” while improving response times for users. Google has been installing servers at major ISPs all over North America which store a copy of most data for local delivery. So, without changing its rankings in analyses like this one, Google can host all kinds of information physically nearer to those who are most likely to access it. In the case of Gangnam Style, this isn’t very useful — but for Maps data and certain search results, it’s revolutionary.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> In general, distrust of Google seems to have more to do with the potential for misuse of its power than actual misuses of it. It’s been on the popular side of several major political issues lately (CISPA, for one), and it has even managed to mostly quiet (or at least outlast) accusations that it manipulates page rankings for its own benefit. Still, the potential is great, indeed. When one company controls how we find information and how we access it, how the owners of that information assess their own success, how we keep track of our own information and get at it again when we need it, there’s cause to worry.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> For years, the assumption has been that Google dominance would reach some kind of asymptote — but even though its major acquisitions and service roll-outs have slowed, it’s the behind-the-scenes efforts that are having the greatest effect. Perhaps it’s a good thing Google+ has failed to offer a significant challenge to Facebook; with social media under its roof, the only major pillar left to replace would be Wikipedia. Then we would truly live in the Google-verse.</div>

Google Accounts For 25% Of All Internet Traffic, Is Used By 60% Of Online Devices Daily

Google Accounts For 25% Of All Internet Traffic, Is Used By 60% Of Online Devices Daily Google’s famous motto, disarmingly simple and ...

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MIT Creates The First Perfect Mirror

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Reflections" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="419" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/reflections-640x419.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>MIT Creates The First Perfect Mirror</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Physicists at MIT have created the first perfect mirror. When light hits the mirror — or indeed any other kind of wave, including acoustic and water waves – it bounces off perfectly, introducing no distortion and exactly preserving the original image (signal). While this is primarily big news for narcissistic MySpacers, these perfect mirrors could also lead to breakthroughs in solar power, lasers, fiber optic networks, or just about anything that involves the reflecting or capturing of light.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Conventional mirrors all work in a very simple way: they block the passage of light (or sound, or water, or radio waves), and so they have no choice but to reflect. As you can imagine, the reflection is never perfect, with some energy being absorbed by the material, or scattered in different directions. For a human checking their hair or makeup, this lack of perfection doesn’t matter; but when you’re talking about reflecting lasers down a hundred miles of optic fiber, or solar power installations, these tiny imperfections can cause a huge drop in efficiency.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/perfect-mirror.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Perfect mirror" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-162339" height="300" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/perfect-mirror-238x300.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="238" /></a>Marin Soljačić and colleagues from MIT’s photonics and electromagnetics group stumbled across this perfect mirror almost by accident. The team was studying the behavior of a photonic crystal — in this case, a silicon wafer with a nanopatterned layer of silicon nitride on top — that had had holes drilled into it, forming a lattice. These holes are so small that they can only accommodate a single light wave. At most angles, light was partially absorbed by the photonic crystal, as they expected — but with a specific wavelength of red light, at an angle of 35 degrees, the light was perfectly reflected. Every photon that was emitted by the red light source was perfectly bounced back, at exactly the right angle, with no absorption or scattering.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> This phenomenon is new and unexpected. John von Neumann, one of history’s most notable polymaths, theorized a similar phenomenon in 1929, but it had never been demonstrated experimentally. “It’s a very different way of confining light,” Soljačić says. A. Douglas Stone, a Yale professor who wasn’t involved with the work, says that this is practical demonstration is “very significant, because it represents a new kind of mirror which, in principle, has perfect reflectivity.”</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> While there are almost undoubtedly practical applications for these perfect mirrors, the MIT team is currently focused on sussing out exactly what’s going on. New phenomena, once they’re understood and easily replicated, often lead to very new and novel applications. In this case, the most obvious application is more powerful and efficient lasers, but concentrated solar power (using mirrors to boil water), and fiber optics could also be improved. Only last week we wrote about DARPA’s hollow-core fiber optics, which use photonic crystals to propagate the signal — presumably, perfect mirrors could be used in these fibers to provide greater range and speed.</div> <div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_161695" style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; width: 650px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/darpa-hollow-core-fiber.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="DARPA's hollow-core photonic-bandgap optic fiber" class="size-large wp-image-161695" height="499" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/darpa-hollow-core-fiber-640x499.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;"> DARPA’s hollow-core photonic-bandgap optic fiber</div> </div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Different photonic crystals with different patterns of drilled holes should be able to reflect waves with other properties, too, such as acoustic, water, and radio. And hey, wouldn’t a perfect mirror also be useful for making an invisibility cloak…?</div> <div> <br /></div>

MIT Creates The First Perfect Mirror

MIT Creates The First Perfect Mirror Physicists at MIT have created the first perfect mirror. When light hits the mirror — or indeed a...

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Samsung Finally Overtakes Apple As Smartphone Profit Leader, Thanks To Galaxy S4 And Maturing Android

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Long lines at Samsung store" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Long-lines-at-Samsung-store-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Samsung Finally Overtakes Apple As Smartphone Profit Leader, Thanks To Galaxy S4 And Maturing Android</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Once relegated to cheap, low-margin phones, Android’s leading vendor Samsung has now overtaken Apple as the world’s most profitable smartphone vendor. Samsung’s estimated $5.2 billion in profits from phone sales compares favorably with Apples’s estimated iPhone profits of $4.2 billion, according to Strategy Analytics — the first time in nearly four years that the iPhone hasn’t held the profit crown.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Samsung’s profit lead is driven by a continuing boom in unit volume. Strategy Analytics estimates its smartphone market share grew to 33.1% on sales of 76 million phones during the quarter. Apple is estimated to have a 13.6% share on sales of 31.2 million phones. While Apple sold nearly 20% more phones than the same quarter a year ago, it hasn’t kept pace with Samsung’s torrid growth — especially in the fastest growing overseas markets.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> More worrying for Apple than losing its profit crown is its relative weakness overseas. Sales in bellwether market China were actually down $3.6 billion quarter-to-quarter, with Europe and the rest of Asia also weaker. Without introducing less-expensive alternative versions of its iPhone, it is likely Apple’s international market share will continue to erode as less-expensive Android phones continue to improve in functionality.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Of course, this quarter represents a trough for Apple, pending expected new product announcements in the fall. It is similarly a bit of a peak for Samsung as its flagship Galaxy S4 has just rolled out, but the numbers are a wake up call that the iPhone-dominated smartphone sector is now up for grabs. Many developers have been focusing primarily on iOS because of its large, unified market share and issues with Android fragmentation. With the Android platform settling down and Google taking more control of its APIs, these sales figures will provide additional incentive to shift resources towards Android development.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Apple-and-Samsung-stock-prices-compared-to-NASDAQ.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Apple and Samsung stock prices compared to NASDAQ" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-162408" height="225" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Apple-and-Samsung-stock-prices-compared-to-NASDAQ-640x225.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> In response to analysts’ questions about the growing clamor for a less-expensive iPhone, Apple CEO Tim Cook took a page from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ book, essentially telling analysts to “trust me.” However, unlike Steve Jobs, Cook hasn’t earned that kind of trust from the markets yet, which partially explains Apple’s continued stock price slide. Nearly flat since Cook was announced as CEO in 2011, Apple’s stock (AAPL) is down over 20% in the last year, while both the NASDAQ and Samsung are up by about the same amount.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Conventional wisdom says that Apple either needs to innovate in a new, blockbuster category — perhaps the much-rumored Apple iTV — or fix the bleeding in smartphone market share with lower-cost models for international markets. Apple is a company that has often proved conventional wisdom wrong, but if it’s planning to do so this time it will have to do it under a new CEO.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="font-family: ProximaNovaRgBold, arial, sans-serif;">Updated:</span> Since this article was published, AppleInsider has published a “rebuttal” of Strategy Analytics’ analysis, coming to the conclusion that Apple is still ahead in smartphone profits. Whichever set of estimates is correct, it is still clear that Apple is under increasing pressure from shareholders to push its innovation into new price points or market segments.</div>

Samsung Finally Overtakes Apple As Smartphone Profit Leader, Thanks To Galaxy S4 And Maturing Android

Samsung Finally Overtakes Apple As Smartphone Profit Leader, Thanks To Galaxy S4 And Maturing Android Once relegated to cheap, low-mar...

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ARM’s Performance-Boosting Big.LITTLE MP Could Lead To Penta-Core SoCs

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="MediaTek" class="attachment-single wp-post-image" height="225" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/MediaTek-IC-348x196.jpg" style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto 8px; vertical-align: top;" width="400" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>ARM’s Performance-Boosting Big.LITTLE MP Could Lead To Penta-Core SoCs</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> SoC designer MediaTek has announced the first implementation of ARM’s big.LITTLE MP technology, and plans to pair the capability with an advanced Imagination G6200 Series 6 graphics core as well. The new chip, the MediaTek MT8135, is being billed as a quad-core, even though it’s two Cortex-A15s and two Cortex-A7s running side-by-side.Unlike Motorola’s 8X or Samsung’sExynos 5 Octa, however, the MediaTek chip really <em>is</em> a quad-core, even if it’s running two very different processors. The key to this functionality is big.LITTLE MP.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/MediaTekIC.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="MediaTek MT8135" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-162527" height="281" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/MediaTekIC-640x281.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> To date, ARM’s big.LITTLE power-saving technology hasn’t had the smoothest ramp. Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa was supposed to be the first SoC to implement the standard, but problems with the chip’s design crippled the Exynos 5410′s implementation and forced Samsung to use Qualcomm hardware in most versions of the Galaxy S4.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> When big.LITTLE was unveiled, it was billed as a way for SoC designers to save power by combining low and high-power ARM cores on the same chip. Workloads would then be migrated to the high-power A15 cores if necessary, or kept on the lower-power A7 cores if not. There are three ways to handle this migration: Cluster migration, CPU migration, and Global Task Scheduling. This is what ARM refers to as big.LITTLE MP.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The terms are largely self-explanatory. Cluster migration means that either the A15 or A7 cluster is powered up, but the operating system isn’t really aware of the difference — it sees whichever cluster is running, and nothing else. CPU migration means that each A7 core is paired with an A15 core. This keeps the total number of active cores constant, but allows the OS to use, say, two A7s and two A15s at the same time. Global Task Scheduling-big.LITTLE MP makes the OS aware of all the installed cores and allows it to run tasks on all of them simultaneously.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bigLittlePerf.png" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="big.LITTLE performance" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-162530" height="465" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/bigLittlePerf-640x465.png" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> A system using big.LITTLE MP with a pair of A15s and a pair of A7s, in other words, can run quad-threaded software. It can also use asymmetric core distributions, though MediaTek’s new part doesn’t do this. Still, in the future, the company could theoretically build a penta-core SoC with two Cortex-A15′s and three Cortex-A7 cores.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The reason we haven’t seen big.LITTLE MP to date is because updating the Android scheduler to be aware of all four cores simultaneously has taken time; the functionality isn’t baked into Android 4.3. Presumably, MediaTek plans to work with its partners to ensure they optimize their devices for the Global Task Scheduler (and, by extension, take the greatest advantage of big.LITTLE).</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> How much big.LITTLE MP boosts performance depends on the application; ARM’s own figures predict gains of 20-60% over just the quad-core alone. The Cortex-A7 cores are still substantially less powerful than the Cortex-A15′s, and just how often the entire quad kicks in will depend on the device’s thermal envelope. MediaTek claims a GeekBench score of 2895 for its CPU, compared to 2530 for the Exynos 5 Octa, 1295 for a quad-core Tegra 3, and 1795 for an iPad 4.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> GPU performance is also interesting. According to MediaTek’s claims, the G6200 inside the MT8135 is capable of around 45fps in the off-screen version of the GLBenchmark Egypt test.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GPU-Perf.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="GPU performance" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-162529" height="351" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GPU-Perf.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> That compares to around 40fps for “Competitor A” (that would be the Samsung Exynos tablet, if MediaTek kept the same labels from the CPU test) and  around 10fps for Competitor B (the Tegra 3 tablet). Both those figures roughly match what we’ve seen from these devices in other tests. The Apple iPad 4 isn’t shown, probably because it scores around 47fps in the off-screen version of this test.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> This is one of the first SoCs to combine support for Global Task Scheduling and a next-generation GPU from Imagination Technologies. If it comes to market on time, it could prove a popular choice for tablet vendors, though whether we’ll see it in any top-flight US designs is an open question. To date, MediaTek’s business design wins have been in Asian markets, but the company wants to push into more powerful designs.</div>

ARM’s Performance-Boosting Big.LITTLE MP Could Lead To Penta-Core SoCs

ARM’s Performance-Boosting Big.LITTLE MP Could Lead To Penta-Core SoCs SoC designer MediaTek has announced the first implementation of...

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Philips Hue LED Smart Lights Hacked, Home Blacked Out By Security Researcher

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Philips Hue" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="640" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/philips-hue-640x640.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Philips Hue LED Smart Lights Hacked, Home Blacked Out By Security Researcher</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Within a the last two decades, lighting has very rapidly moved from Thomas Edison’s highly controlled burning to semiconductor-based illumination. The logical next step after our lights became electronic devices was to turn them into internet-connected gadgets, which Philips did quite successfully with the Hue lighting system. Joining the internet of things is an important advance for lighting, but it means that these devices are subject to the same security issues that all other connected products must face. This week we learned that Philips fell short in its security precautions and a security researcher was able to crack into the Hue’s supposedly closed system, creating a localized blackout.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Using a malware script, Nitesh Dhanjani hacked into a Hue installation and issued a blackout command through the bridge (the Hue’s router) turning the connected lights out entirely. This is essentially the connected home equivalent of a hacker taking over your car, except that Dhanjani actually did it and documented the entire process.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The attack itself doesn’t seem too interesting — theoretically, the hacker gets a bit of malware onto the victim’s computer which tells the Hue bulbs connected to a bridge on the same network to turn off. The bulbs are still powered but they are not not producing light, which is the standard off-state for Hue. This shouldn’t be that bad because the Hue bulbs are designed to revert to the on state after they lose power for any period — say, a wall switch is flipped — but in this case the malware script runs continuously, so the bulbs are commanded to turn off immediately after they are powered up.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> By compromising a device on the network — not the Hue system itself — this malware would completely break the Hue for almost any user, unless they thought to try the bulbs<em>without the bridge installed.</em> In this case the Hue bulbs would not respond to app commands or be able to change color, leaving the owner with a set of very expensive, white Philips LED bulbs (but at least they would work).</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <br /></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> In his paper on the hack Dhanjani walks through the Hue’s security — which is otherwise adequate — and makes the point that connected devices must focus on security. He details how the highly connected Hue can be attacked through multiple vectors, including links on Facebook, IFTTT recipes, or by theoretically finding a flaw in the radio protocol (Zigbee Light Link). By placing the malware on a local PC it becomes persistent and much more effective then attacking the Hue itself. Not only does this method circumvent the Hue’s otherwise adequate security, but it would render replacement Hue systems useless as well.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> This proof-of-concept hack might not seem very concerning — it’s an exploit, coded by a director at Ernst & Young who’s the whitest of white hat hackers, that disables a few bulbs in a very small number of homes — but its point is clear enough. Philips needs need get smarter about its security, and be more careful about steps that are skipped solely for ease of use. In this case the Hue’s whitelist tokens cannot be edited once they are in place without accessing the debugger, which is not only the malware’s attack vector but also the reason the malware can continue to operate, causing a perpetual blackout.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <img alt="Philips Hue bridge" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-163977" height="236" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/puck-300x236.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="300" />I spoke to Hue’s system architect George Yianni about Dhanjani’s findings and learned that Philips has already discussed the issue with the researcher. Philips is taking the matter seriously, but Yianni noted that the exploit wasn’t really so much a hack of the Hue as it was of a computer and the network. The Hue, by design, is based on open APIs and the trust of local devices. These two tenets are what makes the Hue easy to use and easy to program for, so in this case the Hue was simply doing what it was told: turning off when a trusted device issues the command. Better security at the computer level, such as antivirus software, would have prevented this entire situation.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> He admitted that perhaps not all Philips security choices were the correct ones, and there were issues that the company is looking into, such as the reuse of API tokens as opposed to issuing unique random keys, but such decisions have trade-offs. In this instance, each device that connects to the Hue would have to be authenticated by the bridge, as opposed to a single set-it-and-forget-it process during the initial installation.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> While Philips might be in the spotlight here, the company is hardly alone in needing to give a hard look at its security choices. Connected devices need to be given the utmost scrutiny and updated in response to problems. The same mandate is true for all connected devices, from cars to computers to Bluetooth-connected blood monitor implants.</div>

Philips Hue LED Smart Lights Hacked, Home Blacked Out By Security Researcher

Philips Hue LED Smart Lights Hacked, Home Blacked Out By Security Researcher Within a the last two decades, lighting has very rapidly ...

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Intel Snaps Up Fujitsu Wireless To Improve LTE Offerings – But Qualcomm Still Rules The Industry

<br /> <div style="clear: left; color: #333333; float: left; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img alt="Cell tower" class="attachment-single wp-post-image" height="196" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Cell-Tower-348x196.jpg" style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; vertical-align: top;" width="348" /></div> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Intel has quietly snapped up Fujitsu’s wireless division in a bid to further increase its LTE expertise. Specifically, it’s purchased Fujitsu Semiconductor Wireless Products, an Arizona-based arm of the Japanese company that specializes in LTE RF (radio frequency) technology. The move should help Intel develop more advanced LTE products and expand its Bay Trail products internationally in 2014. Right now, the company’s first LTE modem, the XMM 7160, is a single-mode product (multi-mode versions were expected to ship by the end of Q2, but no word on if that happened).</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The importance of ramping up the company’s wireless products can’t be understated. Qualcomm has increasingly dominated the industry in 2012 and 2013 thanks in no small part to its integrated 28nm LTE radio. While Broadcom announced a 28nm LTE radio in February, Qualcomm beat everyone to the punch as far as shipping units. Customers can buy a 28nm radio separately from Qualcomm, and a few companies have, but this eats into motherboard space when that area is under a great deal of pressure already. Higher TDP SoCs and a desire for additional storage capacity can cut into the already tiny space available.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> </div> <div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_163236" style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; width: 650px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ifixit-iphone5-teardown-1.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="The iPhone 5's logic board" class="size-large wp-image-163236" height="280" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ifixit-iphone5-teardown-1-640x280.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;"> Space is at a premium on tiny logic boards (pictured, iPhone 5) [Image credit: iFixit]</div> </div> <span style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;">Buying Fujitsu’s wireless division doesn’t give Intel a top-to-bottom LTE stack. Right now, the company is shipping a single-mode LTE RF transceiver, courtesy of the Infineon acquisition of several years ago. Fujitsu is one of the few companies with a multi-mode LTE RF transceiver, which gives Intel more options when designing products for multiple markets. That’s critically important given that some of its major mobile partners to date have Indian and Chinese OEMs.</span><br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> </div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Qualcomm is also focused on providing LTE chips that can handle a greater number of standards in one SoC, thus allowing manufacturers to cut their total deployment costs across international markets by standardizing on a single chip. Its RF360 family claims to be 50% the size of other solutions, while still providing better performance and power consumption. Other companies, like Broadcom and Nvidia’s Icera software-defined modem, are also hoping to get in on the action in 2014-2015.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> According to Forward Concepts analysts Will Strauss, Intel has likely closed the deal quietly to avoid embarrassing Infineon, which it very publicly acquired for its radio technology several years back. Infineon’s work is baked into the XMM 7160, but clearly Intel wants to evolve its product lines aggressively and chase more design wins against Qualcomm in international spaces.</div>

Intel Snaps Up Fujitsu Wireless To Improve LTE Offerings – But Qualcomm Still Rules The Industry

Intel has quietly snapped up Fujitsu’s wireless division in a bid to further increase its LTE expertise. Specifically, it’s purchased F...

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PlayStation TV: Sony To Bring Internet TV Service To The PS4

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="PS4 family" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ps4-family-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>PlayStation TV: Sony To Bring Internet TV Service To The PS4</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> As Microsoft continues to right all of its Xbox One wrongs, its upcoming console has been catching up to Sony’s PS4. One of the features the PS4 never had over the Xbox One, though, was the console’s ability to tap into and alter live television with an interactive overlay. Now, as Sony signs a deal with Viacom, it looks as though the PS4 will feature a subscription-based television service.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Here in the States, cable television is a hot-button topic. The market competition for rival, near-equivalent cable packages is staggering, and services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant only muddy the waters of choice. Television is a huge part of modern-day life, whether you only watch sports, only watch shameful-but-fun reality shows, or only watch <em>Breaking Bad</em> and <em>Game of Thrones</em>. Even your friend who very obnoxiously rides atop a high horse about not owning a TV just watched <em>Orange is the New Black</em> on Netflix. So, despite all of the Xbox One’s past missteps, one important feature the console has over the PlayStation 4 is that it can interact — live — with all of your favorite televised shows and events. Not to be outdone by this, Sony and Viacom have a tentative deal in place where Sony will have access to all of Viacom’s hit television properties. This includes MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and VH1.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Sony will wield the channels as part of an internet television service the company is looking to begin. Sony’s currently unnamed service wouldn’t follow the Netflix strategy of offering television shows sometime after they air on cable, but instead would allow subscribers to watch live cable feeds. While that is groundbreaking enough to potentially disrupt the current cable service market, what’s even better news is Sony would bring this service to the PlayStation brand. So, rather than hooking your cable subscription into your Xbox Oneand having some kind of overlay, Sony’s service would allow you to subscribe to and access cable through your console, rather than being victim to expensive cable packages filled with channels you never watch.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/PS4.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="PS4" class="alignright size-full wp-image-163537" height="270" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/PS4.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="300" /></a></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Now, a cable service that only consists of Sony properties and Viacom channels wouldn’t be the most appealing. However, now that the Viacom news has slipped out, Sony has approached Time Warner and Disney about programming deals as well. A “hey guys, Viacom’s cool with it” pitch is much better than a “no one wants to be on our service, please join” pitch. Along with the PS4, Sony has plans to bring the service to the PS3 as well as its own televisions. Back on June 26, Sony trademarked the term “PlayStation TV,” so it does appear as though Sony will be pushing the service on its gaming products, if not directly tailoring the service to the consoles.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Reports also suggest Sony will be rolling out this service before the end of the year, which is a time when the PS4 is expected to be available at retail. However, Sony would likely need more programming available. Sports and news would be the prime targets, as those are arguably the only genres of television programming that needs to be watched live and aren’t available on services like Netflix. If Sony can grab more programming, then the PS4 could find its way into homes that aren’t necessarily looking for a games machine, just like the PS2 found its way into homes as a DVD player.</div>

PlayStation TV: Sony To Bring Internet TV Service To The PS4

PlayStation TV: Sony To Bring Internet TV Service To The PS4 As Microsoft continues to right all of its Xbox One wrongs, its upcoming ...

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New Discovery May Make Encryption ‘Exponentially Easier’ To Break

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="MIT prof" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/MIT-prof-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>New Discovery May Make Encryption ‘Exponentially Easier’ To Break</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> “Brute force” may not seem like a term well suited to mathematics or the quiet pursuits in cryptography that helped drive information security from the Second World War on through to the modern surveillance state. Yet, it’s a term that may come back to prominence in the coming years, as researchers inch closer to finding the cracks in modern encryption algorithms. While programs like PRISM and XKeyScore may have access to your emails and social media, they’ve gained that access through legal requests, not hacking — encryption is still theoretically secure from mathematical attacks both sophisticated and brute.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> In this context, “brute force” refers to the simple act of checking all possible combinations in order. You want to know a four-digit PIN, and so begin by guessing 0000, then 0001, then 0002, and so on. For a computer, such an operation is trivial, and will return the correct answer almost instantly. Cryptography is, really, the process of making such analyses as difficult as possible. With a purely brute force approach, it’s thought that a modern computer could chew on today’s PGP-derived encryption schemes for literally billions of years before happening upon a correct solution. This is what we call “secure.” Yet new research (pdf) from an MIT team including professor Muriel Médard (pictured above) suggests that our trust in communications security may be based on false assumptions about the very nature of information.</div> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_164062" style="color: #333333; float: right; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; padding-left: 10px; width: 310px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/shannon.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Claude E. Shannon, the creator of information theory." class="size-medium wp-image-164062" height="271" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/shannon-300x271.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;"> Claude E. Shannon, the creator of information theory.</div> </div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Code-making and code-breaking is based largely on the idea of entropy, and the statistical probabilities that any particular string of characters will occur in a sequence. Current models assume that information conforms to Shannon entropy, which calculates average probabilities over large amounts of data. This may return correct results for messages <em>overall</em>, but code-breaking is all about finding cracks and pressing on them until the whole shatters. In cryptography, only a small stretch of data need deviate from the assumptions of Shannon entropy to render the whole insecure. The failure of this idea, called the uniformity assumption, could have profound implications for data security. In particular, even slight deviations from perfect uniformity in a source file can provide very real inroads for attackers.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Code-breaking has always been about building on small insights. We can leverage what we know about language, for instance, to identify letters in a very simple cipher. If “e” is the most common letter in the English language, then perhaps the most common character in the code represents that letter. Even if all you ever directly find is an “e,” you can start looking for the most common words containing the letter, like “the,” building on assumptions and quickly breaking complex ciphers with just a single initial insight. After a certain point, you’ve whittled down the possibilities for a message to the point that brute-force analysis becomes not just possible, but simple. After years without meaningful progress, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were deciphered with astonishing quickness after the discovery of the symbol for Cleopatra.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> These MIT researchers have shown that one of the most unchallenged assumptions in all cryptography, one that gets at ideas about the very nature of information theory, has left cryptography vulnerable to step-wise attacks of this kind. In their estimation it makes breaking current algorithms “exponentially easier than we thought,” though they are still “exponentially hard.” In other words, it takes a totally impossible task and makes it <em>pretty much</em> impossible, turns a billion-year effort into a multi-million-year one.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Still, it’s these sorts of efforts that can pile up to render our cyphers insecure and, perhaps more importantly, that can force mathematicians and engineers to reexamine their most unchallenged assumptions. As one researcher puts it, cryptography is all about securing your work against threats that you cannot test. In such a field, working from strong basic assumptions is a necessity. The researchers are confident that, having identified this potential weakness, developers will be able to shore up the weakness quickly enough.</div>

New Discovery May Make Encryption ‘Exponentially Easier’ To Break

New Discovery May Make Encryption ‘Exponentially Easier’ To Break “Brute force” may not seem like a term well suited to mathematics or...

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HUVr: The Back To The Future Hoverboard Is Finally Here

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="HUVr hoverboard, in classic Back to the Future pink" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/huvr-hoverboard-back-to-the-future-II-pink-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>HUVr: The Back To The Future Hoverboard Is Finally Here</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Ladies and gentlemen, the 15-year wait is finally over: HUVr Tech has announced what appears to be the first ever hoverboard. Dubbed the HUVr, the device appears to function almost exactly like the hoverboard used by Marty McFly in <em>Back to the Future Part II</em>, but with the addition of a handy iPhone and Android app that can be used to control it. Of course, don’t just take my word for it — if you doubt about the veracity of the HUVr’s ability to float a few feet off the ground, let the dulcet tones of Tony Hawk and Moby reassure you. Seriously – watch the video.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Now, of course, I have to shatter your dreams and tell you that the HUVr is undoubtedly a hoax. A very expensive hoax, with budget enough to create a realistic hoverboard effect and get video appearances from Tony Hawk, Moby, Schoolboy Q, and even a snazzy snippet from venture capitalist Mark Cuban, but still very much a hoax.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> As far as we’re aware, the current state of technology is still a long way away from creating a compact device that can lift 180 pounds (81 kilos) a few feet off the ground. Humanity’s best efforts to date have consisted of, effectively, small hovercraft (floating on a small cushion of air blown by a large fan) — and a few feeble attempts involving magnetic levitation (maglev; the same concept behind maglev trains, but on a much smaller scale).</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/hoverboard-video-clip.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="HUVr video clip" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-177842" height="293" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/hoverboard-video-clip-640x293.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The problem with hoverboard technology is <em>power</em>. It takes a huge amount of energy to lift 180 pounds a few feet into the air — and a significant amount to hold that mass there or move it around. The energy and power density requirements are well beyond what’s capable with lithium-ion batteries. Nuclear fission might just be enough (though the scale and form factor make it unlikely). Fusion, of course, would work — as would cold fusion, probably. (But neither tech is likely to come to a hoverboard form factor in our lifetime.)</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> More realistically, a hoverboard might be powered by permanent room-temperature superconducting magnets — but even then, there’s the problem that the magnets must have something to push against. In the case of maglev trains, there are superconducting rails; in the case of a hoverboard… there’s just plain ol’ throughly nonmagnetic concrete.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> In all likelihood, given the budget behind the hoax and the fairly impressive CGI, this is probably viral marketing for some kind of <em>Back to the Future</em> reboot. Oh well. Maybe if I’m still around in a few decades I’ll get to write about a real hoverboard.</div>

HUVr: The Back To The Future Hoverboard Is Finally Here

HUVr: The Back To The Future Hoverboard Is Finally Here Ladies and gentlemen, the 15-year wait is finally over: HUVr Tech has announce...

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ET Deals: Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop With Touch For $740

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="dell-inspiron-15-7000-side" class="attachment-single wp-post-image" height="225" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/dell-inspiron-15-7000-side-348x196.jpg" style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto 8px; vertical-align: top;" width="400" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>ET Deals: Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop With Touch For $740</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> If you’re looking for a do-it-all laptop that doesn’t break the bank, check out this coupon on Dell’s Inspiron 15 Touch. The whole package includes a Core i7 processor, touchscreen display, and is less than an inch thin, giving it a blend of portability and power that is very intriguing at its $740 price point.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> This model features a 15.6-inch 1366×768 touchscreen, so you’ll be able to take full advantage of the touch optimizations in Windows 8.1 (and beyond). The display is LED-backlit with edge-to-edge Corning Gorilla Glass NBT, which is about 8-10 times more scratch resistant than the soda lime glass on typical laptops.  It should keep your display about as scratch free as possible.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Inside the system is a Core i7-4500U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 1TB HDD, which will let you fly through everyday work, including heavy multitasking and moderate gaming. At 5.7lbs you’ll feel it when you pack it into your bag, but at 0.9 inches thin and with a long-lasting battery t(hanks to the ULV processor), it will still fit easily wherever you need to stow it and let you keep your power cord at home.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/dell-inspiron-15-7000-right-open.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="dell-inspiron-15-7000-right-open" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-177859" height="168" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/dell-inspiron-15-7000-right-open-300x168.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="300" /></a>Four high-speed USB 3.0 ports are spread around the sides, one of which can provide power even when the laptop is off.  There’s also an HDMI 1.4 port and an eight-in-one card reader, to go along with 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0, giving you a variety of connectivity options to hook up your devices or displays.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Dell’s current generation Inspiron line is designed from forged aluminum with diamond-cut beveled edges, and includes extras like a backlit keyboard standard.  With this model Dell is also throwing in 12 months of McAfee LiveSafe to get you started, rather than just a 30 day trial, plus 90 days of phone support and a 1 year warranty with in-home service.  Put it all together and you’re getting a pretty versatile unit at an attractive price for what it offers, so grab the extra savings while this coupon code lasts.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Dell Inspiron 15 touch laptop for $740.  Apply coupon code <span style="font-family: ProximaNovaRgBold, arial, sans-serif;">7CGSBDFTF3TNBR</span> in shopping cart to get the total savings of $400.</div>

ET Deals: Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop With Touch For $740

ET Deals: Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop With Touch For $740 If you’re looking for a do-it-all laptop that doesn’t break the bank, check out ...

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ET Deals: Samsung 840 Evo 750GB SSD For $360

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="samsung-840-evo" class="attachment-single wp-post-image" height="259" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/samsung-840-evo-302x196.jpg" style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto 8px; vertical-align: top;" width="400" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>ET Deals: Samsung 840 Evo 750GB SSD For $360</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> With the price of storage plummeting globally, gone are the days where you have to pay a fortune for a decent sized SSD. With today’s discount, you can now get a whopping 750GB of SSD storage at an average price of just $0.48 per GB, the lowest price we’ve seen for a quality SSD of this capacity.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Upgrading to an SSD from an HDD remains one of the easiest ways to increase the speed of any machine, as the lack of moving parts results in faster boot times, quicker data access, and increased durability. Samsung claims this model will perform roughly ten times faster than a standard HDD, so you’ll certainly notice the difference. At this capacity you won’t need to fiddle with storing the OS and system files on the SSD and confining your bigger storage to a larger HDD, a welcome simplification.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Samsung touts their new TurboWrite technology in this model, which pushes the sequential write speed to 520MBps — a significant jump over what was offered in the previous 840. Sequential read speeds are also a robust 540MBps and random reads check in at 98K IOPS, so overall performance will be fast. The Evo 840 features the newest Samsung MEX Controller, DDR 2.0 NAND Flash and better firmware than the previous 840.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/samsung-840-evo-puzzle.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="samsung-840-evo-puzzle" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-177967" height="189" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/samsung-840-evo-puzzle-300x189.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="300" /></a>Other notable features include AES 256-bit full disk encryption and up to 50 minutes of extra battery life compared to a standard hard drive. Samsung also bundles data migration software and tools to monitor and manage your SSD.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Samsung covers their drive with a 3-year warranty, so you won’t have to worry about that expiring after just a year or two. With today’s savings, right now you can pick up this large SSD for the lowest price we’ve seen yet.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://bit.ly/1l2jrBB" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;">Samsung 840 Evo 750GB SSD</a> for $360. Total instant savings of $170.</div>

ET Deals: Samsung 840 Evo 750GB SSD For $360

ET Deals: Samsung 840 Evo 750GB SSD For $360 With the price of storage plummeting globally, gone are the days where you have to pay a ...

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Microsoft Confirms Long-Overdue DirectX 12 Will Be Unveiled At GDC

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="DirectX 12: AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm on board (with the Windows logo)" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/directx-12-windows-amd-intel-nvidia-qualcomm-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Microsoft Confirms Long-Overdue DirectX 12 Will Be Unveiled At GDC</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Microsoft has confirmed the existence of DirectX 12. As expected, it will be unveiled at GDC 2014 on March 20. It would appear that all the usual suspects are already on board — the use of their logos on the DirectX 12 website strongly suggests that AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and Qualcomm are all preparing DX12 hardware. Considering DX10 was released in 2006, and DX11 was released in 2009, DX12 is incredibly overdue. All signs point to DirectX 12 being a direct competitor to AMD’s recently released Mantle API, and in all likelihood will stymie AMD’s attempt to gain a critical mass of game developers.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> At this point, we don’t know a whole lot about DirectX 12, other than the title and descriptions of a few sessions at the annual Game Developers Conference. The main talk, where we believe Microsoft will formally unveil DirectX 12, is called “DirectX: Evolving Microsoft’s Graphics Platform” and has the following description:</div> <blockquote style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;"> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> For nearly 20 years, DirectX has been the platform used by game developers to create the fastest, most visually impressive games on the planet. However, you asked us to do more. You asked us to bring you even closer to the metal and to do so on an unparalleled assortment of hardware. You also asked us for better tools so that you can squeeze every last drop of performance out of your PC, tablet, phone and console. Come learn our plans to deliver.</div> </blockquote> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/directx-12-logo.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="DirectX 12 logo" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-177995" height="124" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/directx-12-logo-300x124.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="300" /></a>Another session, dubbed Direct3D Futures, will discuss “future improvements in Direct3D that will allow developers an unprecedented level of hardware control and reduced CPU rendering overhead across a broad ecosystem of hardware.” In short, it sounds like DirectX 12 will copy a lot of the functionality that’s present in AMD’s Mantle API. There might be a lot more to DirectX 12, but we simply won’t know until March 20.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Where this leaves AMD, we’re not sure. In an official statement, AMD said it “supports and celebrates” efforts that help game developers get closer to the bare metal. Even if Mantle is stillborn due to DirectX 12, AMD still stands to gain market share if its graphics cards implement these low-level APIs better than Nvidia or Intel. It stands to reason that, if DX12 is a direct response to Mantle, it will probably very closely imitate Mantle’s API calls — which means AMD could have the edge when it comes to developing DX12-compatible GPUs.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> It’s also interesting to see Qualcomm’s logo up there with the other big boys. It does make sense, though, given the market’s overwhelming shift towards mobile, and Microsoft’s personal interests in Surface RT and Windows Phone, both of which are powered exclusively by Qualcomm. This is probably a strong hint that DX12 will contain features that are specifically tuned towards tablets and smartphones — a first for the DirectX/Direct3D platform.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Stay tuned for March 20. We’ll have more data as soon as Microsoft takes to the stage at GDC.</div>

Microsoft Confirms Long-Overdue DirectX 12 Will Be Unveiled At GDC

Microsoft Confirms Long-Overdue DirectX 12 Will Be Unveiled At GDC Microsoft has confirmed the existence of DirectX 12. As expected, i...

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60,000 Miles Up: Space Elevator Could Be Built By 2035, Says New Study

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="elevator head" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/elevator-head-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>60,000 Miles Up: Space Elevator Could Be Built By 2035, Says New Study</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Imagine a ribbon roughly one hundred million times as long as it is wide. If it were a meter long, it would be 10 nanometers wide, or just a few times thicker than a DNA double helix. Scaled up to the length of a football field, it would still be less than a micrometer across — smaller than a red blood cell. Would you trust your life to that thread? What about a tether 100,000 kilometers long, one stretching from the surface of the Earth to well past geostationary orbit (GEO, 22,236 miles up), but which was still somehow narrower than your own wingspan?</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The idea of climbing such a ribbon with just your body weight sounds precarious enough, but the ribbon predicted by a new report from the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) will be able to carry up to seven 20-ton payloads at once. It will serve as a tether stretching far beyond geostationary (aka geosynchronous) orbit and held taught by an anchor of roughly two million kilograms. Sending payloads up this backbone could fundamentally change the human relationship with space — every climber sent up the tether could match the space shuttle in capacity, allowing up to a “launch” every couple of days.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/elevator-diagram.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="elevator diagram" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-177855" height="300" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/elevator-diagram-130x300.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="130" /></a>The report spends 350 pages laying out a detailed case for this device, called a <em>space elevator</em>. The central argument — that we should build a space elevator as soon as possible — is supported by a detailed accounting of the challenges associated with doing so. The possible pay-off is as simple as could be — a space elevator could bring the cost-per-kilogram of launch to geostationary orbit from $20,000 to as little as $500.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Not only is a geostationary orbit intrinsically useful for satellites, but it’s far enough up the planet’s gravity well to be able to use it in cheap, Earth-assisted launches. A mission to Mars might begin by pushing off near the top of the tether and using small rockets to move into a predictably unstable fall — one, two, three loops around the Earth and off we go with enough pep to cut huge fractions off the fuel budget. Setting up a base on the Moon or Mars would be relatively trivial, with a space elevator in place.</div> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_177851" style="color: #333333; float: right; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; padding-left: 10px; width: 310px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/elevator-graph.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="IAA's projections for launch mass over time with different technologies." class="size-medium wp-image-177851" height="117" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/elevator-graph-300x117.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;"> IAA’s projections for launch mass over time with different technologies.</div> </div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Those are not small advantages, and are worth significant investment from the private sector. Governments and corporations spend billions installing infrastructure in space — an elevator could easily pay for itself, and demand investment from anyone with an interest in ensuring cheap access to it down the line. A space elevator is relevant to scientists, telecoms, and militaries alike — and with Moon- and asteroid-based miningbecoming less hare-brained by the minute, Earth’s notorious resource sector could get on-board as well. It will certainly be expensive, probably the biggest mega-project of all time, but since a space elevator can offer a solid value proposition to everyone from Google to DARPA to Exxon, funding might end up being the least of its problems.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> This report lays out a number of technological impediments to a space elevator, but by far the most important is the tether itself; materials science has still to invent a substance that could provide the strength, flexibility, and density needed for a space elevator. Existing technologies will be little help; tethers from the EU and Japan are beginning to push the 100-kilometer mark, but that’s still a long way off orbital altitude, and the materials for existing tethers will not allow much additional length.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Projecting current research in carbon nanotubes and similar technologies, the IAA estimates that a pilot project could plausibly deliver packages to an altitude of 1000 kilometers (621 miles) as soon as 2025. With continued research and the help of a successful LEO (low Earth orbit; anywhere between an altitude of 100 and 1200 miles) elevator, they predict a 100,000-kilometer (62,137-mile) successor will stretch well past geosynchronous orbit just a decade after that.</div>

60,000 Miles Up: Space Elevator Could Be Built By 2035, Says New Study

60,000 Miles Up: Space Elevator Could Be Built By 2035, Says New Study Imagine a ribbon roughly one hundred million times as long as i...

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ET Deals: Sharp 32-Inch LED TV With $100 Gift Card For $250

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Sharp LED HDTV 32-inch" class="attachment-single wp-post-image" height="259" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sharp-32-inch-hdtv-302x1961.jpg" style="border-style: none; margin: 0px auto 8px; vertical-align: top;" width="400" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>ET Deals: Sharp 32-Inch LED TV With $100 Gift Card For $250</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> HDTVs these days are brimming with features, from 3D to 4K to a plethora of “smart” features, which means there are a lot of ways manufacturers are trying to add value and prop up the price of new TVs. These features can be great, but sometimes you just want a simple unit with nice picture and won’t break the bank — that’s where today’s deal comes in. With an effective price of just $150 after a gift card, it’s one of the lowest prices we’ve seen for a 32-inch HDTV.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> A 32-inch model is relatively small as TVs go these days, but a nice bonus to a smaller TV is that you don’t need as high a resolution to achieve great pixel density. At this size most of the difference between the 720p resolution you’re getting and 1080p (and certainly 4K) is lost to the naked eye, so from a value standpoint you’re getting solid clarity for your dollar. It’s also LED-backlit, so it will be thinner and more power efficient than the CCFL LCD units you may be used to seeing on models at this price point.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> This Sharp TV has a 3000000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, optical picture control, and enhanced noise reduction, providing a very nice overall picture. There’s a pair of 5W speakers with simulated surround sound too.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sharp-32-inch-hdtv-angle.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="sharp-32-inch-hdtv-angle" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-178346" height="287" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sharp-32-inch-hdtv-angle-300x287.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="300" /></a>You’ll be able to hook up your standard peripherals in the 2 HDMI ports, as well as the component/composite, VGA and USB ports. There’s also a headphone jack and two audio line-in ports. This TV includes your usual ATSC and QAM built-in digital tuners as well.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Many HDTVs at this price will be refurbished, but this one isn’t, and you get the full one-year manufacturer’s warranty with your purchase. All together, this is a great total value for a 32-inch name brand LED backlit HDTV, so long as you are OK with it being 720p</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Sharp LC-32LE450 32-inch HDTV + $100 Dell eGift Card for $250. Save $40 instantly plus you can use $100 gift card for a total of $140 in savings.</div>

ET Deals: Sharp 32-Inch LED TV With $100 Gift Card For $250

ET Deals: Sharp 32-Inch LED TV With $100 Gift Card For $250 HDTVs these days are brimming with features, from 3D to 4K to a plethora o...

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New ‘Nano Drum’ Lets Astronomers Listen Into The Cosmic Beat Of The Big Bang

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Detector" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="353" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Detector-640x353.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>New ‘Nano Drum’ Lets Astronomers Listen Into The Cosmic Beat Of The Big Bang</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The universe might be mostly empty space, but it can be quite noisy when you’re hunting for incredibly faint signals floating through the aether. Radio telescopes have helped us map distant objects, search for extraterrestrial life, and learn about the birth of the universe, but a new vibrating membrane radio detector created by a group of Danish researchers could help silence some of that background noise and make it easier to see what’s really going on out there.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The new device is essentially a membrane capable of picking up extremely weak radio signals and converting them directly to light. Not only is that functionality highly desirable, the design is considerably more versatile than existing high-power radio detectors. When dealing with faint signals, even tiny amounts of heat in electronic equipment can drown out the signal with noise. To combat this, most existing detectors are cooled with liquid helium to just 4 Kelvin (-269C, -452F). This new drum-shaped detector membrane, amazingly, can operate at room temperature with almost no signal noise.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The device is based on a simple LC circuit — an inductor acts as a resonator for the radio and microwave signals (L) then transfers that signal to a capacitor (C). The design of the capacitor is what makes this detector new and potentially revolutionary. One of the metal plates in the capacitor is replaced with a 50 nanometer thick membrane of silicon nitrate coated with aluminum. So how does it outperform current radio signal detectors? That silicon nitrite membrane acts as a tiny woofer to amplify signals.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/69489_web.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Laser" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-178378" height="235" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/69489_web-300x235.jpg" style="border-style: none; float: right; padding-left: 10px;" width="300" /></a>The team bounced a laser off the aluminum surface to detect the miniscule vibrations and measure the shifts in the reflected light. The upshot is that any signal — be it from a distant alien civilization or the big bang — above the background noise produced by this detector can be transmitted along a fiber optic cable in one step with virtually no loss of fidelity or interference [Research paper: doi:10.1038/nature13029 - "Optical detection of radio waves through a nanomechanical transducer"].</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Even this first iteration of the membrane detector can perform as well at room temperature as current helium-cooled devices and that could be huge for radio astronomy going forward. As we peer deeper into space, we’re also looking back in time. Exploring the cosmic background radiation — the echo of the Big Bang — gives us hints about the origins and structure of the universe. This tiny drum-shaped detector might let us look deeper than ever before.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Other teams are looking at this design in hopes of adapting it for other applications like miniaturizing MRI machines, which currently have to cool the signal amplifiers with liquid helium. The University of Copenhagen team believes the room-temperature nature of its laser membrane detector could make the technology practical in a few short years.</div>

New ‘Nano Drum’ Lets Astronomers Listen Into The Cosmic Beat Of The Big Bang

New ‘Nano Drum’ Lets Astronomers Listen Into The Cosmic Beat Of The Big Bang The universe might be mostly empty space, but it can be q...

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SpaceX Prepares To Take The Biggest Step Towards Affordable Space Travel: Soft Landing The Falcon 9 Rocket (Updated)

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="The base of a newer Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle, with a circular arrangement of Merlin 1D engines" class="attachment-full wp-post-image" height="427" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/spacex-falcon-9-octaweb-640x427.jpg" style="border-style: none; color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>SpaceX Prepares To Take The Biggest Step Towards Affordable Space Travel: Soft Landing The Falcon 9 Rocket (Updated)</b></td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="font-family: ProximaNovaRgBold, arial, sans-serif;">Updated @ 07:15 March 14</span>: SpaceX has delayed this launch until March 30, saying it “needs more time.” No other information was given.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> SpaceX, Elon Musk’s poster child of the commercial space travel revolution, is about to attempt the first ever soft landing of a heavy space launch vehicle. On March 16, SpaceX mission CRS-3 will lift off from Cape Canaveral on a resupply mission to the International Space Station. Usually, the massive primary stage of the rocket would fall into the Atlantic ocean after launch — but in this case, it will sprout some metal legs and use what’s left of its rocket fuel to slowly return to Earth. This is perhaps the single most important step in SpaceX’s stated goal of reducing the cost of space travel by a factor of 10, eventually leading to the human colonization of Mars.</div> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_178396" style="color: #333333; float: right; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; padding-left: 10px; width: 310px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-large.jpg" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="The Falcon 9 is very large. Simply throwing them away into the ocean is rather wasteful." class="size-medium wp-image-178396" height="200" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-large-300x200.jpg" style="border-style: none;" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;"> The Falcon 9 is very large. Simply throwing them away into the ocean is rather wasteful.</div> </div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> One of the primary reasons that the human exploration of space is moving so slowly is<em>cost</em>. Yes, you can argue that space agencies like NASA and ESA should receive more funding, but at the end of the day it’s still excruciatingly expensive for humanity to send stuff into space. For heavy lift vehicles, which are required to lift large satellites, equipment, and supplies into space, it costs somewhere in the region of $10,000 to lift a single pound ($22,000/kg) into orbit around the Earth. It costs even more if you want to propel that mass out of the Earth’s gravity and over to Mars. For sending astronauts into space, though, NASA currently pays around $70 million per seat aboard the Soyuz space capsule. (A crewed version of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, DragonRider, is in development, which will reduce the cost per seat to $20 million — but it won’t launch until 2015 at the earliest.)</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Now, it’s always going to be expensive to lift stuff off the Earth’s surface (blame gravity!), but there are some big changes we can make that will reduce the cost significantly — such as re-using the launch vehicle. Currently, for all space launch vehicles, the initial rockets and fuel tanks are jettisoned — usually into the ocean, never to be seen again. This is incredibly wasteful; according to the Space Development Steering Committee, those rockets cost in the region of $100 million, and we throw them away after a single use. Enter SpaceX’s reusable launch vehicle (RLV) technology.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <br /></div> <div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_166050" style="color: #333333; float: right; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; padding-left: 10px; width: 310px;"> <a href="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/500px-En_Gimbaled_thrust_diagram.png" style="color: #b1700a; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Gimbaled thrust in a rocket" class="size-medium wp-image-166050" height="217" src="http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/500px-En_Gimbaled_thrust_diagram-300x217.png" style="border-style: none;" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="color: #666666; font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15px; padding: 10px 0px;"> How to maneuver a very long cylinder with just a single point of thrust: Gimbals!</div> </div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> SpaceX originally debuted its RLV tech onthe suborbital Grasshopper rocket in 2013 (video above). If the tests were successful — which they were — the plan was to take the same tech and scale it up to the full-size Falcon rocket. Basically, after the first stage detaches from CRS-3, it will use its Merlin rocket engines to slowly return to Earth. For this flight, the first stage will still land in the water — but once SpaceX is confident that it can do so safely, future launches will see the first stage fly all the way back to to the launchpad. After that, SpaceX will start bringing the second stage back to the launchpad, too.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The eventual goal, according to SpaceX, is to create a launch system that is reusable within “single-digit hours.” Basically, SpaceX would give these rockets a quick once-over, fill them back up with fuel… and off they go again. The fuel is still very expensive, but it’s nothing compared to the cost of the hardware. If everything goes to plan, the total cost per pound to launch into Earth orbit could drop to $500 or less — one twentieth of what today’s unreusable rockets cost. Suffice it to say, if SpaceX manages to undercut every other space launch company in the world — including the Russian and Chinese governments — it could suddenly find itself in a very powerful and lucrative position.</div> <div style="color: #333333; font-family: ProximaNovaRgRegular, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 24px;"> The launch of CRS-3 will take place on March 16 at 04:41 EDT (early Sunday morning). There will be a live NASA feed, which will hopefully show the first stage’s powered descent into the ocean.</div>

SpaceX Prepares To Take The Biggest Step Towards Affordable Space Travel: Soft Landing The Falcon 9 Rocket (Updated)

SpaceX Prepares To Take The Biggest Step Towards Affordable Space Travel: Soft Landing The Falcon 9 Rocket (Updated) Updated @ 07:15 M...

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