Lenovo is making it easier for their customers running Linux to update their firmware now on ThinkPad, ThinkStation, and ThinkCenter hardware. Lenovo has joined the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) and following collaboration with the upstream developers is beginning to roll-out support for offering their device firmware on this platform so it can be easily Read more about Lenovo To Make Their BIOS/UEFI Updates Easier For Linux Users Via LVFS[…]

There are, to date, seven different HDMI versions, starting with 1.0, which was introduced back in 2002, and currently ending with 2.1, which was only announced back in November of 2017. The amount of bandwidth each each version is capable of supporting, as well as any additional cool features a version may possess, is decided Read more about You Are Probably Using the Wrong HDMI Cord[…]

Nvidia’s flagship Titan V graphics cards may have hardware gremlins causing them to spit out different answers to repeated complex calculations under certain conditions, according to computer scientists. The Titan V is the Silicon Valley giant’s most powerful GPU board available to date, and is built on Nv’s Volta technology. Gamers and casual users will Read more about 2 + 2 = 4, er, 4.1, no, 4.3… Nvidia’s Titan V GPUs spit out ‘wrong answers’ in scientific simulations[…]

March 19 is the first day of IBM Think 2018, the company’s flagship conference, where the company will unveil what it claims is the world’s smallest computer. They’re not kidding: It’s literally smaller than a grain of salt. But don’t let the size fool you: This sucker has the computing power of the x86 chip Read more about IBM unveils ‘world’s smallest computer’ with blockchain at Think 2018[…]

Razer is a vendor that makes high-end gaming hardware, including laptops, keyboards and mice. I opened a ticket with Razor a few days ago asking them if they wanted to support the LVFS project by uploading firmware and sharing the firmware update protocol used. I offered to upstream any example code they could share under Read more about Razer doesn’t care about Linux[…]

A joint China-Austria team has performed quantum key distribution between the quantum-science satellite Micius and multiple ground stations located in Xinglong (near Beijing), Nanshan (near Urumqi), and Graz (near Vienna). Such experiments demonstrate the secure satellite-to-ground exchange of cryptographic keys during the passage of the satellite Micius over a ground station. Using Micius as a Read more about Real-world intercontinental quantum communications enabled by the Micius satellite[…]

The Japanese company will unveil and test its “brain-to-vehicle” technology at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The “B2V” system requires a driver to wear a skullcap that measures brain-wave activity and transmits its readings to steering, acceleration and braking systems that can start responding before the driver initiates the action.The driver still Read more about Nissan’s Car of the Future Will Read Your Brain Waves[…]

Supports 2.5″ SATA I/II/III hard drive/solid state drive. USB 3.0 supports data transfer speeds up to 5Gbps. Backwards compatible with USB2.0/USB1.0 Efficient UASP Transfer Protocol. An Equipped Cover provides better dust protecting SATA connector from dust. Portable and lightweight design make it is easy to carry. LED light shows Power and Activity status. Support hot Read more about Unitek USB 3.0 to SATA Adapter Cable for 2.5″ SSD or HDD – Hard Drive Adapter: turns your hard disk into portable storage[…]

The Rival 600 even has its own CPU and storage tucked inside, so that once you get everything configured just the way you like, you can save those settings directly in the mouse, so you won’t need to re-download the SteelSeries app if you play with it on a different machine. Source: SteelSeries’ Dual-Sensor Mouse Read more about SteelSeries’ Dual-Sensor Mouse Could Be the King of Precision[…]

Mesh routers like Eero, Netgear’s Orbi, and Google Wifi are getting all the hype these days, but replacing your whole network with a bunch of new devices can be kind of expensive. Asus has a good solution with its new AiMesh system, which lets you repurpose your existing Asus routers as part of a mesh Read more about Asus is turning its old routers into mesh Wi-Fi networks[…]

Seagate is increasing IO performance in disk drives by separating read-write heads into two separate sets which can operate independently and in parallel.The heads are positioned at one end of actuator arms which rotate around a post at their other end to move the heads across the platter surfaces. Thus, with an eight-platter drive, each Read more about Seagate’s lightbulb moment: Make read-write heads operate independently[…]

A 2-in-1 Windows 10 laptop powered by a smartphone chip The chipset behind the Asus NovaGo comes straight from smartphones, so we were into the fact that the volume and power keys are aligned along the right side of the laptop. This is shaping up to be the always-connected laptop counterpart to a smartphone in Read more about Asus NovaGo: laptop built on an ARM mobile phone processor runs Windows[…]

Having been very happy about my old Canon printer, I decided to get another one when it died after four years of trusted service. This one is absolutely horrific. It started off with difficulties connecting via WiFi. The amount of paper jams I have is around 1 page printed to 1 page jammed. The scanner Read more about Canon TS6050 – the printer to not get[…]

An apparent factory cockup has left OnePlus Android smartphones with an exposed diagnostics tool that can be potentially exploited to root the handsets. Security researcher Robert Baptiste suggested the EngineerMode APK was made by Qualcomm, and was intended to be used by factory staff to test phones for basic functionality before they are shipped out Read more about OnePlus phones have a secret root backdoor and the password is ‘angela’[…]

The phone-in-the-closet phenomenon has become a hidden store of e-waste; a two-year-old phone still has value and is still a powerful device. And so it’s great news that Samsung is starting a new “Upcycling” initiative that is designed to turn old smartphones and turn them into something brand new.Behold, for example, this bitcoin mining rig, Read more about Samsung repurposes old phones – bitcoin miner, fishtank monitor, promises to open up[…]

Manufacturing of the Kinect has shut down. Originally created for the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s watershed depth camera and voice recognition microphone sold ~35 million units since its debut in 2010, but Microsoft will no longer produce it when retailers sell off their existing stock. The company will continue to support Kinect for customers on Xbox, but Read more about Exclusive: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect[…]

During a routine periodic fire suppression system maintenance, an unexpected release of inert fire suppression agent occurred. When suppression was triggered, it initiated the automatic shutdown of Air Handler Units (AHU) as designed for containment and safety. While conditions in the data center were being reaffirmed and AHUs were being restarted, the ambient temperature in Read more about Azure fell over for 7 hours in Europe because someone accidentally set off the fire extinguishers[…]

Tosi’s conceptual breakthrough is the creation of an entirely new type of qubit, using both the nucleus and the electron. In this approach, a qubit ‘0’ state is defined when the spin of the electron is down and the nucleus spin is up, while the ‘1’ state is when the electron spin is up, and Read more about Flip-flop qubits: Radical new quantum computing design invented[…]

Antennas receive information by resonating with EM waves, which they convert into electrical voltage. For such resonance to occur, a traditional antenna’s length must roughly match the wavelength of the EM wave it receives, meaning that the antenna must be relatively big. However, like a guitar string, an antenna can also resonate with acoustic waves. Read more about Mini-antennas 100,000 x more efficient, could be used for brain interface machinery, anything tiny.[…]

The Debian advisory says affected users need to disable hyper-threading “immediately” in their BIOS or UEFI settings, because the processors can “dangerously misbehave when hyper-threading is enabled.” Symptoms can include “application and system misbehaviour, data corruption, and data loss”. Henrique de Moraes Holschuh, who authored the Debian post, notes that all operating systems, not only Read more about Intel’s Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs have nasty microcode bug[…]

We present simple tongues consisting of fluorescent polyelectrolytes or chimeric green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) to discriminating 33 different whiskies according to their country of origin (Ireland, US, or Scotland), brand, blend status (blend or single malt), age, and taste (rich or light). The mechanism of action for these tongues is differential quenching of the fluorescence Read more about Artificial tongues can discriminate between whiskeys[…]

A pioneering new technique that encourages the wonder material graphene to “talk” could revolutionise the global audio and telecommunications industries. Researchers from the University of Exeter have devised a ground-breaking method to use graphene to generate complex and controllable sound signals. In essence, it combines speaker, amplifier and graphic equaliser into a chip the size Read more about Good vibrations no longer needed for speakers as research encourages graphene to talk[…]

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China created a quantum device, called a boson sampling machine, that can now carry out calculations for five photons, but at a speed 24,000 times faster than previous experiments. Pan Jianwei, the lead scientist on the project, said that though their device was already (only) 10 Read more about China makes much fastest quantum computer[…]