Lifeboat Foundation

Intel announced a new family of “Core X” desktop processors at Computex today, offering even more powerful versions of its existing Core i5 and Core i7 models, along with a new, top-of-the-line Core i9 line for those who want even more firepower.

The Core X platform is being targeted squarely at enthusiast customers like gamers and content creators — people who want to be able to run the latest games at the best possible resolution while streaming footage and running a chat with viewers or have four different creative tools open at once to put together a new vlog.

To that end, the Core X-series scales from models with 4-cores topping out with the $1,999 Core i9 Extreme, which Intel proudly points out is the first consumer desktop processor to offer 18-cores and 36-threads.

Continue reading “Intel announces Core X line of high-end processors, including new Core i9 chips” »

Nvidia’s new Max-Q initiative wants to do what Intel did with “Ultrabooks,” except for gaming laptops.

Over the past 40 years, microelectronics have advanced by leaps and bounds thanks to silicon and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, enabling computing, smartphones, compact and low-cost digital cameras, as well as most of the electronic gadgets we rely on today.

However, the diversification of this platform into applications other than microcircuits and visible light cameras has been impeded by the difficulty of combining non-silicon semiconductors with CMOS.

IFCO researchers have now overcome this obstacle, showing for the first time the monolithic integration of a CMOS integrated circuit with graphene, resulting in a high-resolution image sensor consisting of hundreds of thousands of photodetectors based on graphene and quantum dots (QD). They incorporated it into a digital camera that is highly sensitive to UV, visible and infrared light simultaneously. This has never before been achieved with existing imaging sensors. In general, this demonstration of monolithic integration of graphene with CMOS enables a wide range of optoelectronic applications, such as low-power optical data communications and compact and ultra sensitive sensing systems.

This 21-inch gaming laptop weighs as much as six Macbook Airs.

Equipped with 3D printers, CNC machines, computers, digital tools and other equipment, a fabrication laboratory, otherwise known as a Fab Lab, is a facility set up to enable people to ‘make anything’. In a bid to provide these capabilities to missions for deep-space exploration, NASA are accepting FabLab proposals from corporate, institutional and charitable teams in the private-sector, due to be reviewed late 2017.

Wi-Fi can pass through walls. This fact is easy to take for granted, yet it’s the reason we can surf the web using a wireless router located in another room.

However, not all of that microwave radiation makes it to or from our phones, tablets, and laptops. Routers scatter and bounce their signal off objects, illuminating our homes and offices like invisible light bulbs.

Continue reading “Scientists Have Found a Way to Photograph People Through Walls Using Wi-Fi” »

MIT Technology Review has reported that researchers working for the company are optimistic they will create an apparatus that replaces tape drives within this decade.

The coders of tomorrow may be bug-checking the multiverse.

Not long ago, your parents might’ve noticed a kid staring at a smartphone in their front yard. There wasn’t anything there. The kid was just…hanging out. What they didn’t know? Said kid was gazing through a digital window and seeing a mythical beast in their well-manicured roses.

This youngster was playing an augmented reality smartphone sensation called Pokémon Go that swept the online masses before fading back. But don’t confuse ephemerality for significance. Pokémon Go’s simple yet viral appeal suggests AR is going to be huge.

Continue reading “The Next Great Computer Interface Is Emerging—But It Doesn’t Have a Name Yet” »