Lifeboat Foundation

Microelectromechanical systems—or MEMS—were a $12 billion business in 2014. But that market is dominated by just a handful of devices, such as the accelerometers that reorient the screens of most smartphones.

That’s because manufacturing MEMS has traditionally required sophisticated semiconductor fabrication facilities, which cost tens of millions of dollars to build. Potentially useful MEMS have languished in development because they don’t have markets large enough to justify the initial capital investment in production.

Two recent papers from researchers at MIT’s Microsystems Technologies Laboratories offer hope that that might change. In one, the researchers show that a MEMS-based gas sensor manufactured with a desktop device performs at least as well as commercial sensors built at conventional production facilities.

Read more

Wait, what? You might be asking yourself what inspired a hacker by the name of George Hotz to build his own self-driving car. That’s what we wanted to know, too. It would seem that Hotz decided to kick out a self-driving car using a 2016 Acura ILX in “about a month.” He’s using Ubuntu Linux as his operating system and has an absurdly massive 21.5-inch display sitting in the middle. A flight navigator joystick rests between the front two seats which, when triggered, engages a fully operational self-driving vehicle system.

Hots spoke with Bloomberg earlier this year for a report this week, showing reporters what his vehicle can do out on the highway back a few days before Thanksgiving. The vehicle is nowhere near a production-level sort of setup, looking more like Hotz ripped the cords out of several machines and bashed them together inside his vehicle — but it works. It all works.

Continue reading “First iPhone hacker built a self-driving car with Linux” »

There’s lots of interesting research – involving things like mushrooms, aluminium, and hydrogen – looking to find the next generation of energy technology that will replace our current lithium-ion batteries, but what if you don’t want to wait for the future to arrive?

Well, how about we just insert a mega-big-ass battery into your next phone and see how that goes? That’s the exact thinking behind the new K10000 smartphone from Chinese tech company Oukitel. This model crams in a gigantic 10,000 mAh (milliampere-hour) battery that’s billed to last between 10 and 15 days in regular use.

Compared to the ho-hum daily/nightly charge routine most of us are used to with our current phones, the K10000’s sensational longevity gives it quite the unique selling point.

Read more

Before each Computerphile interview we asked guests and regular contributors about their first computer.

Professor Uwe Aickelin: Missing Data: https://youtu.be/oCQbC818KKU
Professor Ross Anderson: Chip & PIN Fraud: https://youtu.be/Ks0SOn8hjG8

Continue reading “What Was Your 1st Computer? — Computerphile” »

These batteries use bio-organic technology, and they can charge phones from flat to full in 30 seconds.

Read more

We have very good news for all fans of High RAM Powered Phones. Samsung started mass production of their new LPDDR4 DRAM, allowing for next Generation 6GB RAM phones in India. Samsung essentially produced the industry’s first 12Gigabit LPDDR4 RAM with Samsung’s 20nm manufacturing process.

The real advantage of those chips is that they have a 50% higher density PCB layout with increased capacity as well as reduced power usage. Both of these are very important factors in small devices like a phone/tablet where every mm2 and mW matters. Please note that this is Gigabits, not Gigabytes. 12 Gigabits is around 1.5GB of RAM. Most high end smartphones have four memory dies, that means 1.5GB x 4 = 6GB RAM phones for us.

Read more

With tech giants around the world dipping their toes in the foldable display game, a flexible, rollable, and foldable smartphone was inevitable. And it looks like Samsung has the upper hand at this point, having recently filed a patent with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a slick new design.

Dubbed Project Valley, the product features a foldable display that could roll and fold in a number of different ways, according to the patent application. But Samsung will likely take advantage of the fact that a foldable screen gives you many different surfaces on which to display things, so we could see screens on the outside, inside, and flanks of the new device.

Continue reading “Samsung just filed a patent for foldable smartphones” »

$4.2 billion per ounce. That’s how much the most expensive material on Earth costs. Priced at £100m per gram, the most expensive material on Earth is made up of “endohedral fullerenes,” a cage of carbon atoms containing nitrogen atoms. It could help us make atomic clocks and accurate autonomous cars.

Current atomic clocks are the size of rooms. This material could allow us to make atomic clocks that fit in your smartphone.

Read more

(credit: Ericsson ConsumerLab)

Artificial intelligence (AI) interfaces will take over, replacing smartphones in five years, according to a survey of more than 5000 smartphone customers in nine countries by Ericsson ConsumerLab in the fifth edition of its annual trend report, 10 Hot Consumer Trends 2016 (and beyond).

Smartphone users believe AI will take over many common activities, such as searching the net, getting travel guidance, and as personal assistants. The survey found that 44 percent think an AI system would be as good as a teacher and one third would like an AI interface to keep them company. A third would rather trust the fidelity of an AI interface than a human for sensitive matters; and 29 percent agree they would feel more comfortable discussing their medical condition with an AI system.

Read more