Day: November 13, 2013

Art Culture Design

Weird Nanophotonic Materials Bend and Trap Light to Make Crazy Colors

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As reported on Wired. BY NADIA DRAKE Normally, the colors we perceive are determined by the wavelengths of light reflected by objects in the world around us. But not all surfaces reflect light the same way. Picture an iridescent butterfly, for example. It might look drab from one direction, but explode into bright yellows or purples from another. That’s because of microscopic structures that alter the way light bounces off the butterfly’s wings.At the NanoPhotonics Centre at the…

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Engineering Military

Christening the USS Gerald Ford: inside the most advanced, most expensive warship ever built

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As reported on The Verge. By Matt Stroud Is the $13 billion price tag worth it? This weekend, the United States Navy christened what many claim is its greatest engineering achievement: the USS Gerald Ford supercarrier, the first in a completely new line of warships called the Ford class. The ship, seated in a huge dock on the James River near the southern district of Newport News, Virginia, is the most technologically advanced, the most expensive,…

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Government Security

The edge of the abyss: exposing the NSA’s all-seeing machine

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As reported on The Verge. by T.C. SOTTEK “I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975 On November 4th, 1952, a new…

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Android Application Culture

Cyanogen Launches Installer App To Bring Aftermarket Android To The Masses

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As reported on TechCrunch. by Chris Velazco Cyanogen Inc. revealed a few months back that it closed a $7 million seed investment from Benchmark Capital. The vision it laid out at the time was no small one: it wants its cooked version of Android to become the third most-used mobile OS behind iOS and Android proper. Naturally, that involves getting CyanogenMod onto as many devices as it can, and today the company took one giant leap in…

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Apple History

Apple II’s 35-year-old operating system is now open to the public

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As reported on Engadget. By Matt Brian In a world of super-fast OS X and Windows machines, it’s easy to forget that early desktop computers were a lot more basic. That was the case for the Apple II, Cupertino’s first mass-market computer that utilized a cassette tape for data storage and just 4K of memory. Now, more than 35 years after its release, the Computer History Museum is making the original DOS source code for the iconic computer…

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