Comments

yetihehe

Technology

Google's Android Allows Soldiers to Put Drones on Buddy List

By Jeremy Hsu Posted on 10.21.2009 3 Comments
Google's Android operating system for cell phones could allow soldiers to track fellow squad members and even unmanned drones in real time on a map -- as long as the humans and robots are on their buddy list.

10.22.2009 at 08:46am - Comment by yetihehe

You could. With iPhone - not. iPhone's licence specifically disallows sending telemetric data (I planned on sending it in rocket, to get accelerometer and gps data sent in realtime through gsm, so if parachute failed at least I would have data)
Science

Scientists Find A Precision Clock Logging the Milliseconds Inside Your Brain

By Clay Dillow Posted on 10.20.2009 1 Comments
Though we do it without thinking, keeping track of time is integral to the brain's function, keeping our senses and our actions ordered in a chronology that we then recall in the form of memory. But important as it is, researchers have never understood the mechanism by which humans index the happenings of everyday life. Now, two macaque monkeys may have helped MIT researchers solve the time tracking puzzle.

10.21.2009 at 01:50pm - Comment by yetihehe

Yeah, at last they found QueryPerformanceTimer() for me :). Tens of milliseconds is really fast for a biological mind, 20ms interval corresponds to 50 timer ticks per second.
Science

World's First All-Electric Locomotive Has Over 1,000 Batteries, Runs 24 Hours On a Single Charge

By Adrian Covert Posted on 10.7.2009 12 Comments
Norfolk Southern is the latest company to push a piece of heavy industrial machinery into green territory with their 100% electric NS 999 locomotive. The zero-emissions train makes use of 1,080 12-volt batteries that allows it to run for 24 hours on a single charge--all while carrying the same load as a conventional locomotive.

10.8.2009 at 12:07pm - Comment by yetihehe

It is not world's first. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_locomotive The first one with batteries was built in 1837. In Europe electric locomotives getting power from overhead lines are more common than diesel ones (used only where there is no electric lines, on old tracks)
Science

World's First All-Electric Locomotive Has Over 1,000 Batteries, Runs 24 Hours On a Single Charge

By Adrian Covert Posted on 10.7.2009 12 Comments
Norfolk Southern is the latest company to push a piece of heavy industrial machinery into green territory with their 100% electric NS 999 locomotive. The zero-emissions train makes use of 1,080 12-volt batteries that allows it to run for 24 hours on a single charge--all while carrying the same load as a conventional locomotive.

10.8.2009 at 01:33am - Comment by yetihehe

Worlds first? Ahahahaha! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_locomotive. In Europe electric locomotives are more common than diesel ones (used only where there is no electric lines over tracks). The only new thing is that it uses batteries. But it's also not first, Robert Davidson made first one using batteries in 1837.
Science

Custom-Tuned Eyesight Is the Latest Trend in Ophthalmology

By Posted on 10.6.2009 7 Comments
20/20 vision is no longer enough to function in this world. In the latest trend in laser eye surgeries, people are tailoring their eyesight to suit their lifestyle or profession, hoping to give themselves an edge in their respective fields. Need better long-range vision for some friendly night-time sniping from half a mile away? Tweak it. Want one eye adjusted for distance and the other for reading? Tweak it.

10.6.2009 at 11:23am - Comment by yetihehe

Me too. As for tuning sight for lifestyle? Why not order some custom contact lenses? This way you can be more versatile. For snipers, adaptive optics in scopes will probably do more than tuning the eyes.
DIY

What Comes After Arduino?

By Mikey Sklar Posted on 9.25.2009 5 Comments
The Arduino platform is doing something amazing: bringing hardware development to the masses. It's a sweet little system, with a built-in hardware programmer, simplified programming language, and lively user base that offers plenty of sample code and assistance in the online forums. While this fully assembled solution is a good way to get your feet wet, there are a lot of good reasons to just buy an off-the-shelf processor, make your own circuit board and write in a low level language like C. It can be cheaper, quicker and easier to debug. Here, check out some of the projects I've made and how I pay for my hobby, as well as my hardware setup.

9.27.2009 at 04:19pm - Comment by yetihehe

I recommend you "The art of electronics" book. It's really big (over 1k pages) but very in-depth. THE best way is just to find some local hobbyist and ask him about those parts which you just cannot understand. I'm now in the same position as you. With computer background some things are just harder (I've burned one at89s2051 yesterday because of one misunderstanding, too silly to explain) because some concepts are inappropriate in electronics.
Technology

New Reactor To Make Breathable Air Out of Moon Rocks

By Stuart Fox Posted on 8.11.2009 20 Comments
One the major differences between visiting the moon and staying on the moon involves resupply. In fact, the prospect of constantly hauling water and oxygen to the moon is so daunting that NASA offered a million dollars to the first lab that could extract 11 pounds of oxygen from a simulated pile of moon rocks. Well, it seems like scientists at the University of Cambridge may want to start thinking about how they're going to spend their million.

8.11.2009 at 02:59pm - Comment by yetihehe

Tons can't be cubic, so maybe it's one cubic meter?
Cars

300 MPG Riversimple Urban Car Open-Sources Its Hydrogen Fuel Cell Tech

By Posted on 6.22.2009 11 Comments
The Riversimple Urban Car was nine years in the making. But when the diminutive, hydrogen-powered prototype debuted in London recently, the biggest difference between it and other fuel-cell vehicles wasn't its in-wheel electric motors or banks of ultracapacitors. It was its development-and-business model.

6.22.2009 at 02:46pm - Comment by yetihehe

I would use it to drive to work. If leasing would cost me similarly to my car costs, it would be good enough.
The Environment

Iceland's Geothermal Bailout

By Posted on 6.19.2009 7 Comments
It's spring in Iceland, and three feet of snow covers the ground. The sky is gray and the temperature hovers just below freezing, yet Gudmundur Omar Fridleifsson is wearing only a windbreaker. Icelanders say they can spot the tourists because they wear too many clothes, but Fridleifsson seems particularly impervious. He's out here every few days to check on the Tyr geothermal drilling rig, the largest in Iceland. The rig's engines are barely audible over the cold wind, and the sole sign of activity is the slow dance of a crane as it grabs another 30-foot segment of steel pipe, attaches it to the top of the drill shaft, and slides it into the well.

6.19.2009 at 01:31pm - Comment by yetihehe

"If it exploited the island's full reserves in only the conventional way, it could produce 20 terawatt-hours of electricity per year" Big applauds for getting units right. It's so rare this days :)
The Environment

Windpower Prop, Seen Close Up, Is Massive

By Dan Smith Posted on 6.17.2009 6 Comments
A single prop for a wind turbine has been caught in the wild by Dogmantra, a friend of the Boing Boing Gadgets blog.

6.17.2009 at 01:21pm - Comment by yetihehe

Plus - notice how light it is. Only two axes on a trailer are enough.