8 Machines That Can Assemble Themselves [Self-assembling Machines]
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/nouiPEGX0wU/8-machines-that-can-assemble-themselves
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 Graphics Card Is Insane: Two GTX 260s Bolted Together [Gtx 295]
Expected to be unveiled at CES, the GTX 295 (nee GTX260 GX2) actually is made up of two print-circuit boards, and each one has a GTX 200 GPU, 240 stream processors, 448-bit memory bus and 896MB DDR3 memory. It's totally outrageous, in other words, and requires 289W of power, so I hope you've got a behemoth of a power supply.
The price, while unknown, will be proportionately juggernaut-sized, crushing your wallet. Since it's designed to beat ATI's Radeon HD 4870 X2, it'll likely fall in the same price range, probably around or slightly north of $500. It could swing cheaper though, since Nvidia's current high-end card, the GTX 280, is trending south of $400 at the moment. Guess we'll see, but I can't afford it either way.
Oh, and first person to ask "will it run Crysis?" is banned. I'm not kidding. [Expreview via X-bit Labs]
RC Helicopter Modded 45 Caliber Handgun Will Probably End In Disaster [Gadgets]
This modded Bergen Gasser EB remote-controlled helicopter has a handgun on its nose. Yes. A handgun. And as you can see in the video, it can also be fired remotely.
This modded Bergen Gasser EB remote-controlled helicopter has a handgun on its nose. Yes. A handgun. And as you can see in the video, it can also be fired remotely.On its own, the Gasser EB is a mean, noisy machine. At 54 inches long, it's equipped with a 34.5-inch (800-millimeter) blade, and a gasoline engine powerful enough to resist the drag of a hefty handgun. Which is precisely what the owner of this beast, Jim Simmons, added to it: A Springfield 1911-A .45 caliber weapon.
Simmons also added a remote-controlled firing system. And if you think that's pretty stupid because the pilot on the ground won't be able to aim, think again: He also added a gun-sight digital camera. In other words: This is a fully-armed mini-UAV, which you can actually use to fly anywhere, aim, and fire at whatever target you want.
Yeah, this is exactly how documentaries about loads of dead people start. Or maybe not people, but polar bears and elks.
Dear Santa,
I didn't get the VP job, but can you please bring me this RC Helicopter with .45 caliber handgun?
Thank you and merry Xmas,
xxxooo
Sarah
[LiveLeak]
iPhone Copy and Paste Now Working Between Safari and Mail [Apple]
Finally, someone has conceived a way to copy and paste text from Safari to Mail, and between web pages. And this time, it doesn't require any software installation and it's legal:
Unlike other approaches, it works with the two apps that matter most, Mail and Safari, and gets around Apple's onerous App Store terms through a clever combination of javascript bookmarks and web services.
In fact, it doesn't require anything to be installed, so it avoids the App Store altogether. As you can see in the video, Pastebud—as the service is called—works using two bookmarks in Safari. One prepares and loads the page you are viewing, ready to select text at the touch of a finger. From there, you can copy any text you want and create a new mail message with that text in it. In addition to that, you will be able to copy and paste in the text field of a different web page.
While this is not full copy and paste capabilities, I, for one, welcome the ability do exactly this, which is basically what I want to do 95% of the time. According to Jed Schmidt, creator of Pastebud, they have been testing it for about a week and they are now "putting the finishing touches on the web site before launch".
Nikon D400 DSLR Spec List Claims 14.8MP Sensor, 1080p HD Video [Nikon]
Nikon Rumors got these specs as anonymous tip—anonymous comment, actually—so the standard caveats apply, BUT they do look fairly plausible, and fall in line with what Nikon's been up to lately. The most significant update is the addition of the rumored 1080p 24fps video recording, a whack back at Canon's 5D Mark II, whose video capabilities have blown us away again and again. Of course, we'll have to wait and see how good it actually looks. (Here's why DSLR video is finally happening, if you're curious.)
The rest is fairly expectable with a mix of current Nikon features and new specs—14.8MP DX sensor, but I'm hoping it'll be more D700-like in the noise department—and $2000 seems about right as the price tag, though $1800 would be more aggressive.
* New 14.8 megapixel DX format CMOS sensor effective 14.3 megapixel
* Self-cleaning sensor unit (low-pass filter vibration)
* ISO 100 - 6400 (with boost up to ISO 25600 and down to ISO 50)
* 14-bit A/D conversion
* Movie capture at up to 1080p 24 fps with stereo sound
* Nikon EXPEED Plus image processor 30% faster than previous EXPEED image processor
* Super fast operation (power-up 13 ms, shutter lag 40 ms, black-out 90 ! ms)
* Kevlar / carbon fibre composite shutter with 200,000 exposure durability
* Multi-CAM3500DX Auto Focus sensor (51-point, 15 cross-type, more vertical coverage)
* Auto-focus tracking by color (using information from 1005-pixel AE sensor)
* Auto-focus calibration (fine-tuning) now available (fixed body or up to 20 separate lens settings)
* Vignetting control in-camera
* Automatic chromatic aberration correction
* Custom image parameters now support brightness as well as contrast
* Seven frames per second continuous shooting (nine frames per second with battery pack)
* 3.0″ 922,000 pixel LCD monitor
* Live View with either phase detect (mirror up/down) or contrast-detect AF, face detection
* 'Active D-Lighting' (adjusts metering as well as applying D-Lighting curve)
* Detailed 'Control Panel' type display on LCD monitor, changes color in darkness
* Buttons sealed against moisture
* Same ultra-fast startup and shutter lag as D700
* Scene Recognition System (uses AE sensor, AF sensor)
* Picture Control image parameter presets
* UDMA compatible single CF card slot
* Virtual horizon indicates if camera is level (like an aircraft cockpit display)
* Extensive in-camera retouching
* HDMI HD video output
* Magnesium alloy body with connections and buttons sealed against moisture
[Nikon Rumors via CrunchGear]
The Slimmest Houses On Earth Are Made In Japan [Architecture]
And you thought your apartment was small. We have added the mountain-side house, but head to Bouncing Red Ball for the rest of their selection. [Bouncing Red Ball]
VLC Remote App Controls The Baddest Media Player Via iPhone [IPhone Apps]
The VLC Remote comes in two flavors—regular and free. Both version can connect to any computer running VLC on your network to play/pause/skip tracks and videos and control the volume; the $1 (for a limited time) version adds control of playlists, and a cool feature that lets you browse your hard drive for any media files and play them. To pair your computer with the remote, you need to download a quick setup assistant here.
If only VLC had better music library management (with iPod/iPhone) and seamlessly streamed to my Airport Express (you can do it with a $25 add-on, but not natively), I could almost consider giving up iTunes all together. But for now, it remains the trustiest video player on any platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). Check out our friends at Lifehacker for more hands-on info. [VLC Remote Free (iTunes), VLC Remote (iTunes), Lifehacker]
Windows Mobile Browser Battlemodo: Can You Get the Real Internet? [Battlemodo]
Before we get started, a quick note on the last Windows Mobile test, and what we're doing differently here. Some of you guys complained that the Samsung Epix was a crappy, slow piece of hardware. However, according to Laptop, its 624MHz Marvell processor and 128MB RAM are specs that just about on par with the three phones clamored for in the comments. Still, you get your wish: Here we lined up the Sony Xperia X1, HTC Touch Pro (AT&T's Fuze) and the Samsung Omnia, and put them through the same tests. On the Epix, for Opera testing, we went with v8.65 in order to not use beta software. (Opera's own site lists 8.65 as its most recent stable version.) Here, all the Windows Mobile hardware we've added to the test have Opera 9.5 built right in.
So without further explanation, here are the numbers—time to load the page, and how accurately it was rendered using Firefox 3 as a reference:
As you can see, the Xperia, Fuze and Omnia are about on par with the Epix when it comes to IE (they suck!), though Opera Mobile 9.5 obviously crushes 8.65 when it comes to speed and competency. I asked Opera why I saw the performance differences between the three phones and they admitted that there are some tweaks, which "are mainly with making our browser work best on the different devices." So, let's look at the new phones and see how they rate against the Epix:
You probably noticed in the chart that load times are longer over Wi-Fi in a few spots. This is because it would randomly hang, not loading data, for up to 20 seconds. The Xperia was aggravating because its touchscreen seemed to be the least responsive of the three, making navigation a pain, though its optical mouse came in handy for zipping around pages, and it worked better than the Omnia's. One other annoyance is that Opera blocked its virtual symbol keyboard from coming up, which made it hard to enter one of the URLs. It falls smack in the middle.
I had the smoothest overall experience with the Fuze, and would be my closest thing to a recommendation. Its touchscreen was responsive, which made double tapping to zoom and pan around pages fast and mostly intuitive in Opera Mobile. Having symbols mapped directly to the keyboard is a big time saver while punching in URLs. This is good, since it seemed to be the slowest of the three, both over 3G and Wi-Fi. Sluggishness aside, the web experience is markedly more usable than the other two new phones.
The all-touchscreen Omnia, despite being the fastest over 3G in a number of cases, was a nightmare. During the 3G tests, it managed to crash Opera on three of the six pages tested. I also had tons of Wi-Fi issues. Eventually I was told by Samsung that VZAppZone, Verizon's pseudo-app store that's all but pre-installed on the phone (after you fire it up, it installs), was breaking the Wi-Fi. (On the Epix in the previous showdown, I was later told by Samsung that installing Opera is what broke Wi-Fi for IE. So, uh, Samsung maybe...oh, whatever.) Also, its portrait keyboard has keys so ridiculously skinny, they'd remind anorexic models not to eat. When Opera did work and a page was actually loaded, it was the snappiest at moving around the page. But overall, yeesh.
Conclusion
So where would I slot Opera 9.5 overall if I were to slide it into the previous browser battle? I'd give it a B-. It has a great, desktop-y UI (though I wish a few of the buttons were a smidge bigger, taking into consideration fat fingers and the inadequacies of resistive touchscreens). It's really competent, and it has a solid zoom metaphor, with the double taps usually working like a charm. And it has extras like tabs. But, and this is the big but, it still doesn't feel quite as smooth or instantly responsive as Safari or Android's browser. It's clearly an OS issue, though, not an Opera one.
Speaking to that, testing these three phones actually took longer than it did to test the six in the original Battlemodo, entirely because of how much wrestling I had to do with Windows Mobile. I've used close to a dozen Windows Mobile devices over the last year, and it's still a bitch.
If you haven't noticed in our reviews of Windows Mobile phones, we've basically ceased comparing to them anything but other WM phones, in a wishful attempt at dulling our totally appropriate disdain for the OS, lest the review essentially turn! into one giant bitchfest. They're clearly off in their own world of performance and function.
Even ceding the point that Windows Mobile is somehow more functional than the iPhone or Android, it's like comparing one of those 100-in-1 kitchen gadgets that'll blend, slice, dice, toast, saute, braise, set the table, clean the dishes AND suck you off while it's doing all that to a Waring MX1000 blender. It doesn't matter how much the all-in-one gadget can technically do if you can't figure out how to use it, and it performs every task with only mediocre results.
If the iPhone ran half as poorly as Windows Mobile phones, Apple haters would (rightfully) scream as loudly as Apple fanboys do about Vista. If any BlackBerry was as much of a flustercuck, reviewers would trash the crap out of it. I'm sorry, but at this point, any apologist left defending Windows Mobile is either delusional or full of crap—either way, not worth listening to.
I won't touch another Windows Mobile phone until WM7 or at least 6.5, no matter how awesome the hardware looks. Call me when it runs Android.
Sony's 240Hz BRAVIA KDL-52XBR7 HDTV reviewed: extra Hz not worth the $
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/10/sonys-240hz-bravia-kdl-52xbr7-hdtv-reviewed-extra-hz-not-worth/
Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment
Sony's 240Hz BRAVIA KDL-52XBR7 HDTV reviewed: extra Hz not worth the $ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsTunebite lets you enjoy Nokia's Comes with Music service, DRM-free
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/10/tunebite-lets-you-enjoy-nokias-comes-with-music-service-drm-fr/
Not that you'd be interested, because DRM isn't a clumsy or expensive solution to a problem that exists largely (or even solely) in the heads of the film and music industries, but a new version of Tunebite is out, and among its many features is the ability to make unprotected dupes of tracks downloaded from Nokia's Comes With Music service. This isn't the "crack" everyone's talking about -- there's nothing new about software that records protected audio off the sound card -- but this package does so at speeds of up to 54x. Not bad, eh? But please, don't use it. Kanye needs our money if he's going to keep scarfing up all those awesome gadgets.
[Via Electricpig]
[Via Electricpig]
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio
Tunebite lets you enjoy Nokia's Comes with Music service, DRM-free originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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