Gadget & Tech

The story, still sometimes repeated in creationist circles, goes like this: it is the 1960s, at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, and a team of astronomers is using cutting-edge computers to recreate the orbits of the planets, thousands of years in the past. Suddenly, an error message flashes up. There’s a problem: way back in history, one whole day appears to be missing.

The scientists are baffled, until a Christian member of the team dimly recalls something and rushes to fetch a Bible. He thumbs through it until he reaches the Book of Joshua, chapter 10, in which Joshua asks God to stop the world for . . . “about a full day!” Uproar in the computer lab. The astronomers have happened upon proof that God controls the universe on a day-to-day basis, that the Bible is literally true, and that by extension the “myth” of creation is, in fact, a reality. Darwin was wrong – according to another creationist rumour, he’d recanted on his deathbed, anyway – and here, at last, is scientific evidence!

Inevitably, those of us who aren’t professional scientists have to take a lot of science on trust. And one of the things that makes it so easy to trust the standard view of evolution, in particular, is amply illustrated by the legend of the Nasa astronomers: the doubters are so deluded or dishonest that one needn’t waste time with them. Unfortunately, that also makes it embarrassingly awkward to ask a question that seems, in the light of recent studies and several popular books, to be growing ever more pertinent. What if Darwin’s theory of evolution – or, at least, Darwin’s theory of evolution as most of us learned it at school and believe we understand it – is, in crucial respects, not entirely accurate?

Read More

Last week, the FCC rolled out tools for Android, iPhone, and the Web that enable users to test—and, crucially, to report—their broadband speeds. In addition, it decided to fund a third-party measurement company that will use hardware devices to test actual line speeds in tens of thousands of US homes. It’s all about the data, and the FCC is determined to get it one way or another.

In the last seven days, 150,000 people have used the Web testing service. The results aren’t scientific, of course; there was no random sampling and the two test platforms both function in different ways. But the results do show some general trends in US broadband.

Read More

Seagate is now shipping its fourth-generation 3.5-inch Constellation ES drive, the industry’s first 2TB enterprise-class drives featuring 6Gb SAS. The fourth-generation, 3.5-inch, 7200-RPM enterprise environments enables cost-effective, highly efficient storage with capacities of 500GB, 1TB and 2TB, it offers best-in-class reliability, leading 6Gb/s SAS or SATA 3Gb/s performance, PowerChoice optimized power and cooling technology, and a government-grade security option – all backed by Seagate.

Read More

ZoomIt introduces the first SD card reader for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Used in conjunction with the ZoomIt app, the dongle connects through the iPhone’s dock connector to load photos, music and miscellaneous files from an SD card.

You can pre-order the ZoomIt for $50.

Rumor on the Internet is that Apple is in “advanced ” talks to buy Lala the music service. Even if the conversation is real, it doesn’t mean it’ll amount to anything. But anyone who ever used Lala can grasp why Steve Jobs & Co. might be tempted to make it their own.

The company has an oddball history that includes a period as a CD-swapping service and a foray into radio, but for over a year, it’s focused on pretty much being what iTunes might be if it were an entirely Web-based service.
Read More

Sony and FIFA announced an agreement for selected media rights of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in 3D. FIFA is to produce the world’s first FIFA World Cup in 3D. Up to 25 of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa matches will be produced using Sony’s 3D professional cameras, which will provide coverage of the action that is unprecedented in depth, vividness and excitement to people around the world.
Read More

New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course). Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.

The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.

These displays could be hooked up to any kind of electronic device, also inside the body. Medical uses are being explored, from blood-sugar sensors that show their readouts on the skin itself to neurodevices that tie into the body’s nervous system — hooking chips to particular nerves to control a prosthetic hand, for example.
Read More

The day that Apple killed Atom support with the release of 10.6.2 was a sad one for many in the hackintosh community. Just as many expected, however, Atom support has returned.
InsanelyMac forum member teateam has developed a replacement kernel for installation on Atom-powered, hackintosh netbooks. Keep in mind that this is bleeding-edge stuff here and not for the faint of heart.
Read More