An anonymous reader quotes a report from LiveScience: In just over half of a second (0.637 seconds), the Sub1 Reloaded robot made each side of the Rubik's Cube show a single color. This breaks the previous record of 0.887 seconds achieved by an earlier version of the same machine using a different processor. German technology company Infineon staged the record attempt at the Electronica trade fair in Munich this week, as a way to highlight its self-driving-car technology. The company provided one of the Sub1 Reloaded robot's microchips. Infineon said more than 43 quintillion combinations of the Rubik's Cube's colored squares are possible. That same number of cubes would cover Earth in 275 layers, resulting in an approximately 65.6-foot-high (20 meters) layer of Rubik's Cubes, the company added. The record-breaking attempt began with the press of a button. Sensor cameras on the machine had their shutters removed, and the computer was then able to detect how the cube was scrambled. The computing chip, or the "brain" of the machine as Infineon called it, then determined the fastest solution. Commands to execute the solution were sent to six motor-controlled arms. "It takes tremendous computing power to solve such a highly complex puzzle with a machine," Infineon said in a statement. "In the case of 'Sub1 Reloaded,' the power for motor control was supplied by a microcontroller from Infineon's AURIX family, similar to the one used in driver assistance systems."

Orome1 quotes a report from Help Net Security: Adding hardware protections to software ones in order to block the ever increasing onslaught of computer malware seems like a solid idea, and a group of researchers have just been given a $275,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to help them work on a possible solution: malware-detecting CPUs. This project, titled "Practical Hardware-Assisted Always-On Malware Detection," will be trying out a new approach: they will modify a computer's CPU chip to feature logic checks for anomalies that can crop up while software is running. "The modified microprocessor will have the ability to detect malware as programs execute by analyzing the execution statistics over a window of execution," Ponomarev noted. "Since the hardware detector is not 100-percent accurate, the alarm will trigger the execution of a heavy-weight software detector to carefully inspect suspicious programs. The software detector will make the final decision. The hardware guides the operation of the software; without the hardware the software will be too slow to work on all programs all the time."

BlackBerry has officially stopped making its own phones, but the company has one last treat for die-hard fans: a new phone sporting its trademark physical keyboard. According to Bloomberg: Chief Executive Officer John Chen had hinted at the phone in September, but hadn't confirmed it until Thursday, when he spoke to Emily Chang in an interview on Bloomberg TV. "We have one keyboard phone I promised people," Chen said. "It's coming." Under Chen, BlackBerry has gradually shifted from smartphones to software and said in September it would completely stop producing, stocking and distributing its own phones. Instead, it will license the BlackBerry brand to outside companies to put on phones they build themselves. The physical keyboard is BlackBerry's best-known smartphone feature, with many former users still lamenting its absence as they clumsily tap out e-mails on their iPhones and sign off with words like "pardon the typos."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For almost five months -- possibly longer -- the Spotify music streaming app has been assaulting users' storage devices with enough data to potentially take years off their expected lifespans. Reports of tens or in some cases hundreds of gigabytes being written in an hour aren't uncommon, and occasionally the recorded amounts are measured in terabytes. The overload happens even when Spotify is idle and isn't storing any songs locally. The behavior poses an unnecessary burden on users' storage devices, particularly solid state drives, which come with a finite amount of write capacity. Continuously writing hundreds of gigabytes of needless data to a drive every day for months or years on end has the potential to cause an SSD to die years earlier than it otherwise would. And yet, Spotify apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux have engaged in this data assault since at least the middle of June, when multiple users reported the problem in the company's official support forum. Three Ars reporters who ran Spotify on Macs and PCs had no trouble reproducing the problem reported not only in the above-mentioned Spotify forum but also on Reddit, Hacker News, and elsewhere. Typically, the app wrote from 5 to 10 GB of data in less than an hour on Ars reporters' machines, even when the app was idle. Leaving Spotify running for periods longer than a day resulted in amounts as high as 700 GB. According to comments left in the Spotify forum in the past 24 hours, the bug has been fixed in version 1.0.42, which is in the process of being rolled out.

Snowgen writes: NPR reports that Dungeons and Dragons has been inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY: "The nomination process for the Toy Hall of Fame is open to the public -- but to get in, a toy has to be approved by 'historians, educators, and other individuals who exemplify learning, creativity, and discovery through their lives and careers.'" "More than any other game, Dungeons and Dragons paved the way for older children and adults to experience imaginative play," says Curator Nic Ricketts. "It was groundbreaking. And it opened the door for other kinds of table games that borrow many of its unique mechanics. But most importantly, Dungeons and Dragons' mechanics lent themselves to computer applications, and it had a direct impact on hugely successful electronic games like World of Warcraft." The report adds: "The list of 12 finalists for this year's honors had included bubble wrap, Care Bears, Clue, the coloring book, Nerf ball, pinball, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, Transformers and Uno. When it emerged in 1974, Dungeons and Dragons was groundbreaking, says curator Nic Ricketts of The Strong. In addition to its own merits, the game created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson established a pattern for how similar role-playing games might work -- both on table-tops and, eventually, on computers and other devices."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Reviews for Apple's new MacBook Pro have yet to officially go live, despite a couple false starts earlier this week. Those should arrive any day now ahead of a retail release for the machine, but one pro video editor today published his early hands-on review after using the new 15-inch model in a real-world setting. The review also aims to address some of the early criticisms of the new MacBook Pro from pros, showing how the machine held up in a real-world, professional environment. The author Thomas Grove Carter works at Trim Editing, a studio in London where he edits "high end commercials, music videos and films" using Final Cut Pro. The review specifically focuses on the experience using the machine in a professional video editor's daily workflow. Carter's conclusion is that the new 15-inch model he was using (he doesn't detail specs), is more than capable of handling daily editing in FCP X with 5K ProRes footage. He also notes that machine "tears strips off 'superior spec'd' Windows counterparts in the real world." Thomas Grove Carter writes: "First off, It's really fast. I've been using the MacBook Pro with the new version of FCP X and cutting 5k ProRes material all week, it's buttery smooth. No matter what you think the specs say, the fact is the software and hardware are so well integrated it tears strips off 'superior spec'd' Windows counterparts in the real world. This has always been true of Macs. If you're running software with old code which doesn't utilize the hardware well, you're not going to get great performance (as pointed out here)."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is hosting its Chrome Dev Summit today. There hasn't been a lot of news out of the event, but one number that stood out in today's keynote by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher was that there are now 2 billion Chrome installs in active use across desktop and mobile. This is the first time Google has shared this number. Sadly, Google didn't announce any new user numbers for Chrome today. The latest stat for active Chrome users remains at 1 billion -- a number Google shared in April. While this number is surely higher today than it was six months ago, the company decided to focus on the number of active browser install today. "I wanted to make this point that there are a lot of Chrome browsers out there," Fisher said. "What's exciting about this to you all is that when you think about building for the web, there' a lot of browsers out there that implement the latest web standards -- that implement the latest and greatest web features." The report also notes that Google has a total of seven products with more than a billion users: Gmail, Android, Chrome, Maps, Search, YouTube and Google Play Store.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Everyone, it seems, is going the fast charging route these days. Thanks to the nearing ubiquity of USB-C on flagship devices, the feature is quickly becoming a standard -- "standard" in the sense that everyone is doing it, not so much that there's any consistency to the tech. All in all, it's a nice addition to manufacturers' newfound focus on battery life. And while Google has embraced its own version on its new Pixel devices, the company's not so keen on letting everyone implement their own version. In newly released Android Compatibility Definition papers issued for Nougat, the company stops short of an outright ban on technologies like Qualcomm's Quick Charge, though it does take a pretty clear stand, "strongly recommend[ing]" against it. At issue, among other things here, is potential compatibility issues with standard USB chargers. Google said in its latest revision of the Android Compatibility Definition Document, "Type-C devices are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to not support proprietary charging methods that modify Vbus voltage beyond default levels, or alter sink/source roles as such may result in interoperability issues with the chargers or devices that support the standard USB Power Delivery methods. While this is called out as "STRONGLY RECOMMENDED," in future Android versions we might REQUIRE all type-C devices to support full interoperability with standard type-C chargers."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: As Donald Trump's shock election victory reverberated around Silicon Valley late on Tuesday night, some high-profile technologists were already calling for California to secede from the United States. The broader west coast is a stronghold for the Democrats, and significantly more politically progressive and racially diverse than large swathes of central U.S. California is also the biggest economy in the U.S. and the sixth largest in the world with a gross state product of $2.496 trillion for 2015, according to the IMF. The campaign for independence -- variously dubbed Calexit, Califrexit and Caleavefornia -- has been regarded as a fringe movement. But support was revitalized by influential Uber investor and Hyperloop co-founder Shervin Pishevar, in a series of tweets announcing his plans to fund a "legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation" -- posted even before the full results were in. A few hours later, Hillary Clinton conceded the election to Trump, and Pishevar told CNBC that he was serious about Calexit. "It's the most patriotic thing I can do," he said, adding that the resulting nation would be called New California. "We can re-enter the union after California becomes a nation. As the sixth largest economy in the world, the economic engine of the nation and provider of a large percentage of the federal budget, California carries a lot of weight," he said. Pishevar was supported by others in Silicon Valley. Angel investor Jason Calacanis said that California succession would be simple in the wake of both Brexit and a Trump win. Evan Low, a Democrat serving in the California state assembly, said that he'd support the introduction of a bill to start the independence process. The proposal illustrates the technology industry's frustration with Trump over his repeated criticisms of Silicon Valley companies. Trump has said in the past that he would make Apple build computers in the U.S. He also thinks Amazon CEO "Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post to exert political power and avoid paying taxes, and claimed that Mark Zuckerberg's push for specialist immigration would actually decrease opportunities for American women and minorities." In July, 145 technology leaders wrote in an open letter about how "Trump would be a disaster for innovation."

A new Kickstarter campaign aims to sell you fingerprint stickers that, when applied to a pair of gloves, allow you to unlock a mobile device that's protected with a fingerprint scanner. The sticker is powered by Nanotips and is "made with an extremely adhesive conductive material that can be applied to any surface for touch capability." Gizmodo reports: You can of course still access a fingerprint-secured smartphone using regular touchscreen-friendly gloves by simply punching in your passcode on-screen, but why should we have to give up the convenience of a feature like Touch ID for months on end just because it's cold outside? We shouldn't, and these Taps stickers will allow you to use your mobile device's touchscreen and fingerprint reader, for unlocking your phone or making a purchase, even while your actual fingers (and fingerprints) are being kept warm and toasty inside a glove. After applying a textured stick to the tip of your glove, you just have to register it as an approved fingerprint using your smartphone's security settings. You might assume this would mean that anyone with a Taps sticker on their gloves could access anyone else's protected phone. But according to its creators, using nanoparticle technology every single Taps sticker has an individual and unique artificial print ensuring that only your gloves can access your device. That being said, there is still the risk of someone stealing your gloves, which is easier than stealing your fingerprints, so you'll have to weigh the security risks introduced versus the added convenience these offer.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Nature: For more than a decade, neuroscientist Gregoire Courtine has been flying every few months from his lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to another lab in Beijing, China, where he conducts research on monkeys with the aim of treating spinal-cord injuries. The commute is exhausting -- on occasion he has even flown to Beijing, done experiments, and returned the same night. But it is worth it, says Courtine, because working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States. And this week, he and his team report the results of experiments in Beijing, in which a wireless brain implant -- that stimulates electrodes in the leg by recreating signals recorded from the brain -- has enabled monkeys with spinal-cord injuries to walk. The treatment is a potential boon for immobile patients: Courtine has already started a trial in Switzerland, using a pared-down version of the technology in two people with spinal-cord injury. The team first mapped how electric signals are sent from the brain to leg muscles in healthy monkeys, walking on a treadmill. They also examined the lower spine, where electric signals from the brain arrive before being transmitted to muscles in the legs. Then they recreated those signals in monkeys with severed spinal cords, focusing on particular key points in the lower part of the spine. Microelectrode arrays implanted in the brain of the paralyzed monkeys picked up and decoded the signals that had earlier been associated with leg movement. Those signals were sent wirelessly to devices that generate electric pulses in the lower spine, which triggered muscles in the monkeys' legs into motion.

New submitter TheFakeTimCook writes: An article on MacRumors has revealed that Apple's latest MacBook Pro has already outsold all competing laptops this year, according to new data shared by research firm Slice Intelligence: "Slice Intelligence says the new MacBook Pro accumulated more revenue from online orders during its first five days of availability than the Microsoft Surface Book, ASUS Chromebook Flip, Dell Inspiron 2-in-1, and Lenovo Yoga 900, based on e-receipt data from 12,979 online shoppers in the United States. The new MacBook Pro generated over seven times the revenue that the 12-inch MacBook did over its first five days of availability, according to Slice Intelligence. If accurate, that means it took the new MacBook Pro just five days to accumulate 78% of all the revenue generated by the 12-inch MacBook since its April 2015 launch. The data follows Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller's claim the new MacBook Pro had received more online orders than any previous MacBook Pro as of November 2. Apple has also reportedly told its overseas manufacturers to expect strong MacBook Pro shipments to last until at least the end of 2016. Slice Intelligence extracts detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A recent patent application (PDF) shows that Samsung has ambitious ideas for future phone-design experimentation, although the South Korean manufacturer may have second thoughts about bendy phones after recent battery explosions and recalls. In April, Samsung was reported to have filed a patent with the Korean Intellectual Property Office for a foldable smartphone. The application was picked up by Dutch website Galaxy Club. The document shows a narrow Samsung device with a screen that bends and folds like an old-school flip phone handset. The device is described as something that can be "folded or unfolded semi automatically." The patent also referred to a "secondary" display, which is supposed to activate when you fold the device, according to International Business Times UK.

Microsoft announced the availability of Windows 10 build 14965 to Windows Insiders. Among other noticeable inclusions, the new build comes with a virtual trackpad for users with a touch-capable Windows 10 machine. The Verge adds: Microsoft describes the feature as a way to control external monitors with a tablet and no mouse. It's designed to sit in the taskbar, if selected, and provide a virtual trackpad on the screen that can be used to control the mouse and right-click or left-click options. You can now enable a touchpad icon in the notification area, and you can tweak the trackpad gestures in the main Windows 10 settings panel. It's an interesting addition that will be welcomed by Windows 10 tablets users that aren't using a keyboard or trackpad, or those who connect tablets up to second displays regularly.Microsoft reporter Tom Warren has made a short video to demonstrate the feature.

In the past, Apple has only sold refurbished Macs, iPads and various niche devices on its refurb store. Now the company is officially selling refurbished iPhones, offering the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus in its refurb store. 9to5Mac reports: Apple has sort of sold refurbished iPhones before, but those sales were relegated to an eBay store front and never fully acknowledged by the company. This is the first time that the company has offered iPhones on its official refurb store online. Customers will find the iPhone 6s in 16 GB storage varieties for $449.00. The larger iPhone 6s Plus is being offered in two storage varieties: 16Gb and 64GB for $529 and $589, respectively. It seems that all colors are currently available, which includes Silver, Space Gray, Gold, and Rose Gold. In the end, users can expect to save up to 15% ($110) by going the refurbished route, and remember that these devices come with a full 1-year factory warranty, which makes refurb units a great idea for budget-conscious shoppers. It's also worth noting that all of Apple's official refurbished iPhones are unlocked and come SIM-free, plus they all include a brand new battery and outer shell. It's as close to a new iPhone as you'll get without actually buying one brand new.

Bloomberg is reporting that Google's parent company Alphabet is tightening the reigns on Project Wing, a unit of Alphabet's X research lab, by "trimming headcount and shelving initiatives." What's more is that they've reportedly nixed a partnership with Starbucks. Bloomberg reports: Following the departure of project leader Dave Vos in October, the unit also froze hiring and began asking some staff to seek jobs elsewhere in the company, according to some of those people [familiar with the decision]. The decisions are part of a broader Alphabet effort to rein in spending and try to turn more experimental projects from loss-making risky bets into real businesses. Drones are in a particularly knotty place. U.S. federal regulation does not yet allow for delivery, except in select test zones. However, Alphabet's deceleration comes as other technology companies, including Amazon.com Inc., plow money into drone delivery. In August, Project Wing won approval for test flights at a U.S. site, part of a White House effort to encourage unmanned vehicle delivery. Then in September, Alphabet announced a new foray: a partnership with Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. to deliver food via drone at Virginia Tech. Alphabet was in advanced talks with Starbucks and had tested delivery with the coffee-chain operator, according to two people familiar with the plans. Those plans were nixed, largely over disagreements about the access to customer data that Alphabet wanted, according to a former X employee.

Hyperloop One has announced today that it would build the first commercial hyperloop transportation system from Dubai to Abu Dhabi -- a trip that would take only twelve minutes. TechCrunch reports: The journey is 99 miles (159.4 km) long and normally takes about two hours by car but H1 promises it would take a mere 12 minutes in the hyperloop. H1 is partnering with the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) to evaluate the feasibility of building this system in greater Dubai and the UAE and the announcement follows the next stage of development for the company, which is gearing up for its "Kitty Hawk" moment early next year when H1 will test a full-scale prototype of its system in the Nevada desert. It's also part of the company's next stage of progress in Dubai. Last August H1 co-founder Shervin Pishevar hinted the first hyperloop would be built overseas and the company announced in October it received $50 million in funding from DP World Group of Dubai, the third-largest ports operator in the world, to build a hyperloop system to move cargo throughout the country and the world. You can watch H1's new video that shows their "vision for the future of mobility" here.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Daily Dot: Sega may be done making the Genesis (known as the Mega Drive outside of the U.S.), but that doesn't mean people aren't still buying them. In Brazil, the 16-bit system is still hugely popular, and now it's being brought back into production. TecToy, which produces all manner of gadgets and toys, has launched preorders for all-new Sega Mega Drive stock, complete with support for the original game library and controllers. But what's even more astounding about the announcement is that it's all being done with Sega's blessing, making these official, brand new, Sega-branded consoles. The new consoles are spitting images of the originals, aside from the addition of an SD card slot, which makes it great for emulation. They're even complete with support for A/V cables, though there's no HDMI or other bells or whistles. That might seem like a bad move, but for the Brazilian market, it's a perfect fit, not to mention that you can easily pick up an A/V-to-HDMI converter for fairly cheap. The system costs roughly $125 (BRL399) and includes a SD card with 22 games.

A source close to NASA Eagleworks has leaked the test results of the 'impossible' EM Drive. While it's important to note that the results that have been leaked haven't been published in an academic journal, they do suggest that the system works and is capable of generating force of 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt in a vacuum. ScienceAlert reports: The paper concludes that, after error measurements have been accounted for, the EM Drive generates force of 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt in a vacuum. That's not an insignificant amount -- to put it into perspective, the super-powerful Hall thruster generates force of 60 millinewtons per kilowatt, an order of magnitude more than the EM Drive. But the Hall thruster uses fuel and requires a spacecraft to carry heavy propellants, and that extra weight could offset the higher thrust, the NASA Eagleworks team conclude in the paper. Light sails on the other hand, which are currently the most popular form of zero-propellant propulsion, use beams of sunlight to propel them forward rather than fuel. And they only generate force up to 6.67 micronewtons per kilowatt - two orders of magnitude less than NASA's EM Drive, says the paper. The NASA Eagleworks team measured the EM Drive's force using a low thrust pendulum at the Johnson Space Centre, and the tests were performed at 40, 60, and 80 watts. They were looking for any sign that the thrust could be a result of another anomaly in the system, but for now, that doesn't appear to be the case. "The test campaign included a null thrust test effort to identify any mundane sources of impulsive thrust, however none were identified," the team, led by Harold White, concluded in the paper. "Thrust data from forward, reverse, and null suggests that the system is consistently performing with a thrust to power ratio of 1.2 +/- 0.1 millinewtons per kilowatt." But the team does acknowledge that more research is needed to eliminate the possibility that thermal expansion could be somehow skewing the results. They also make it clear that this testing wasn't designed to optimize the thrust of the EM Drive, but simply to test whether it worked, so further tweaking could make the propulsion system more efficient and powerful.

Tesla has updated its Supercharging Network of free fast-charging stations. Customers who purchase Teslas after January 1st, 2017, will be required to pay "a small fee to Supercharge." The fee itself "will be charged incrementally and cost less than the price of filling up a comparable gas car." The Verge reports: Current Tesla owners with Supercharger-equipped cars will be able to use the stations for free for the life of those vehicles, and a Tesla spokesperson tells The Verge that the free charging will transfer to successive owners. Customers who buy Teslas after that January 1st cutoff will be afforded 400 kWh of free Supercharging credits each year, good for about 1,000 miles, according to Tesla. The company says it will release more details about the change later this year, but added that "prices may fluctuate over time and vary regionally based on the cost of electricity." "Our Supercharger Network will never be a profit center," the company wrote in a blog post about the change. Tesla says that, by losing less money on providing free electricity at these stations, that the fees will subsidize the continued expansion of the Supercharger network. The Superchargers allow for a full charge in about 75 minutes or a half charge in about -- much faster than the standard Level 1 or Level 2 chargers found around the U.S. -- and Tesla has built 734 Supercharger stations (with nearly 5,000 chargers) since the network was started in 2012.