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Epilog Zing Personal Laser Etching

July 12, 2008 by 13 Comments

The new Epilog Zing is designed to bring laser engraving to the home for personal use. It’s got 25 watts of power, a small enough footprint to fit neatly on your desk, and the video above shows it has a pretty high resolution. But compared to the mini18, the Zing has less Z movement, a lower wattage, a smaller engraving area, and about half the speed. Also, with a price set around $8,000, we don’t think many people will be buying them for personal use just yet. However, if you have a small home business that requires these services, the Zing could be perfect. If you are looking for more information on laser engraving, see [ladyada’s] laser information page.

[via Engadget]

Microfluidic Art

July 11, 2008 by 2 Comments


Microfluidics expert [J. Tanner Neville] decided to turn his work into art. Along with his student, [Austin Day], they turned lab chips into miniscule works of art by developing a technique of patterning proteins onto substrates. Each colored line you see is actually a groove full of liquid about 20 microns in width. Another student of [Neville’s], [Albert Mach], is currently working on a method of preserving the liquid for longer amounts of time. As you can probably guess, the dye tends to dry up within a few days. He is also taking submissions for artwork, so we encourage you to submit! We’re certainly looking forward to what else [Neville] and his students come up with next.

[via io9]

Memristor-based Memory Prototype By 2009

July 11, 2008 by 5 Comments

An article in EETimes suggests that we may see a memristor-based memory prototype in development as soon as 2009. The memristor is claimed by many to be the theorized fourth passive circuit element, linking the fundamental circuit variables of charge and flux. This news may not sound that exciting to most computer geeks, but this new component could usher in a new era of computer memory by forming the basis of RRAM (resistive random-access memory).

Scientists at HP labs have finally confirmed that the memristor behaves as their theories predicted. The reason that the component will work so well for memory is that the process is nonvolatile and the bits themselves will only change after the CPU tells them to. The bits in current DRAM systems slowly fade out and require a refreshment every 50 nanoseconds.

[via /.]

Packet Trace Anonymization With PktAnon

July 11, 2008 by 5 Comments


If you’re a network researcher or systems administrator, you know that network traces are often necessary, but not easy to share with colleagues and other researchers. To help with both ease of use and handling of sensitive information, the Institute of Telematics has developed PktAnon, a framework that anonymizes network traffic.

It works by using a profile-based scheme that supports various anonymization primitives, making it easy to switch between different network protocols and anonymization methods. New primitives can easily be added, and several pre-defined profiles are bundled into the distro. The profiles are all XML-based.

Essentially, there are two major uses for network traces: anonymizing user traffic in order to research it, and anonymizing in-house usage, thus preventing the leakage of sensitive information. It’s a rather rigid scheme, but using profiles for this was a stroke of genius that made it a lot easier, more flexible, and as a result, more useful and powerful.

[via TaoSecurity]
[photo: mlpoulter]

NVIDIA’s Problems Worse Than Expected?

July 11, 2008 by 7 Comments

According to the an article in the INQUIRER, it is very possible that all chips with the G84 and G86 architecture are faulty. The problem is said to be excessive heat cycling and when NVIDIA was questioned, they blamed their suppliers for the issue. Although NVIDIA is claiming that only a few chips that went to HP were affected, the INQUIRER points out that all the chips use the same ASIC across the board, which has not changed in the architecture’s lifetime. They also point out that Dell and ASUS are having the same issues.

The article then goes on to theorize why we have not seen more complaints. They say that failures of these type usually follow a bell curve distributed over the time domain and we are only on the initial up-slope. This is probably due to the different use patterns of the users. For example, people with laptops are turning their computers on and off more than desktop users, thus facilitating the heat cycling’s effect. They suggest the quick fix as more fanning, but eventually NVIDIA will have to do something about this.

[via Engadget]

Radiohead Makes Entire Video With Friggin’ Lasers

July 11, 2008 by 3 Comments


[Radiohead], being no strangers to out of the box delivery ideas, are preparing to release a new video that was created without the use of cameras. The entire video for the song House of Cards was “filmed” using lasers.

The system, known as Geometric Informatics and Velodyne Lidar, scanned the entire environment 900 times a minute to capture an entire party in real time.

The video was originally set to be released in mid July, but appears to have been moved back.

IPhone Dev Team Releases Jailbreak Video

July 11, 2008 by 2 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R63lKICiWfg&hl=en&fs=1]
The iPhone dev team, notorious for jailbreaking the iPhone has just released a video of the iPhone 3G hacked. Keep up to date with it and watch for a release on their blog. This is a major update to the PwnageTool which is already available for previous versions of the iPhone.

They have added a lot of new features such as: canned web searches, custom installer configuration, and custom root partitions. They promise to release it soon, but state that it will not be this weekend. You can get a the high resolution version of the video from our mirror.