Hugh Pickens writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is going back to work as chief scientist at Fusion-io, a start-up company that tweaks computers to let them tap vast amounts of storage at very quick rates. In the early days of Apple, Wozniak stood out as one of Silicon Valley's most creative engineers, demonstrating a knack for elegant computer designs that made efficient use of components and combined many features into a cohesive package and Wozniak will do similar work at Fusion-io, although this time with larger server computers and storage systems rather than PCs. 'I have a pretty quiet life, and I like to watch technology evolve,' says Wozniak. 'In this case, I like the people and the product, and said I would like some greater involvement.'"

Ian Lamont writes "The news last week that the Indian government was working on a $10 laptop was too good to be true. It turns out that the project is actually a wireless-enabled storage device, not a laptop." Update: 02/04 21:36 GMT by T : Always-illuminating Liliputing has a short article with a picture of the device.

An anonymous reader writes "If the US plans to develop wind farms across the country they need a better way to predict the wind direction and the duration. NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) is looking to do just that. In December, NCAR signed an agreement with Xcel Energy to develop a wind prediction system for the company's wind energy farms in Colorado, Minnesota, and Texas. Experimental forecasts may start as early as May. At present, most wind forecasts rely heavily on statistical forecasting methods, since the numerical weather forecast products available from operational centers are produced with coarse-grid, larger-scale models. The RTFDDA system, however, is designed to provide a birds-eye view of local weather for small areas of special interest, like wind farms, through a multiple level downscaling algorithm." I hope that decentralized weather-data gathering stations (like many people have feeding data to The Weather Underground) would be useful for this purpose.

Al writes "Technology Review has an article about a snake-like robotic arm that could soon be used to treat injured soldiers as they lie on the battlefield. Developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the snakebot attaches to a stretcher and is controlled remotely using a joystick, allowing a doctor to assess a soldier's injuries as the bullets fly by. In future, the robotic arm will be fitted with sensors allowing it to measure vital signs and probe for internal bleeding. Here's a brief video of a prototype arm in action. The arm will become part of the US military's high-tech stretcher, called the Life Support for Trauma and Transport system. This is essentially a portable intensive-care unit, with a ventilator, defibrillator, and other physiological monitors, and it's currently being used in areas of Iraq and Afghanistan."

J. Dzhugashvili writes "Nvidia has already pulled the curtain off its Ion platform, which couples GeForce 9400 integrated graphics with Intel's Atom processor. But how does it perform? The Tech Report has taken the tiny Ion reference system for a spin in games and video decoding to see if the GeForce GPU really helps. The verdict? 1080p playback is actually smooth, and the whole system only draws 25W during playback. Fast-paced action games are another story—Half-Life 2, Quake Wars, and Call of Duty 4 are all choppy with a single Atom core and single-channel RAM, although they do run. TR concludes that Ion is nevertheless a clear improvement over Intel's 945G chipset, especially since Nvidia doesn't expect Ion-based Atom systems to cost significantly more than all-Intel ones." Update: 02/04 09:14 GMT by T : HotHardware is one of the several other sites offering some performance benchmark numbers on the new chipset.

SpuriousLogic sends along a SciAm piece that begins, "The United States overtook Germany as the biggest producer of wind power last year, new figures showed, and will likely take the lead in solar power this year, analysts said on Monday. Even before an expected 'Obama bounce' from a new President who has vowed to boost clean energy, US wind power capacity surged 50 percent last year to 25 gigwatts — enough to power more than five million homes."

jschauma writes "Many sites are reporting that the next Sidekick LX 2009/Blade, from Danger (acquired by Microsoft early in 2008), is going to run NetBSD as their operating system, causing Microsoft's recruiters to look for NetBSD developers."

nerdyH writes "Asus is taking pre-orders for a netbook based on Intel's second-generation platform, the secret-shrouded N280/GN40 chipset. Early product specs confirm that the second wave of netbooks are likely to offer faster graphics and lower power use, along with room for much, much larger batteries. The N280 apparently integrates the northbridge and CPU, meaning that the GPU moves to 45nm process technology, the FSB gets replaced by an on-chip interconnect, and overall board real-estate drops to a third of what it was previously — hence the ability to stuff an 8,700mAh battery into a 3-lb. device. The right shift key is slightly bigger, too, though still no trackpoint pointer (guess I'll keep waiting)."

coondoggie writes to tell us about the latest technique researchers are investigating as a possible means to store data, magnetic tornadoes. "Conventional computer memories store data in "bits" that consist of two magnetic elements that record data in binary form. When these elements are magnetized in the same direction, the computer reads the bit as a '0'; when magnetized in opposite directions, the bit represents a '1,' researchers stated. According to scientists, a vortex forms spontaneously — one vortex per disk — in a small magnetic disk when the disk's diameter falls below a certain limit. Although the vortex does not whirl about like a meteorological tornado, the atoms in the material do orient themselves so that their magnetic states, or 'moments,' point either clockwise or counterclockwise around the disk's surface. At the center of the disk, the density of this rotation causes the polarity of the vortex core to point either up out of the disk or down like a tornado's funnel, researchers stated. Because the vortices that form on the disks contain two independently controllable and accessible magnetic parameters, they could form the basis for quaternary bits that would contain data written as a 0, 1, 2, or 3."

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian PC retailer Eurocom is planning to ship a 12-pound laptop with Intel's Core i7 chip, which might go down well with deep-pocketed geeks. The Core i7 was designed with desktop computers and servers in mind; later members of the Nehalem chip family are planned to address portables. The 17" notebook's price, not yet announced, will certainly be in excess of $5,000."

The Washington Post is reporting on the growing pressure from state and local law enforcement agencies for permission to jam wireless signals the way the Secret Service and the FBI can. Officials especially want to be able to drop a no-call blanket over local prisons around the country from time to time. "...jamming remains strictly illegal for state and local agencies. Federal officials barely acknowledge that they use it inside the United States, and the few federal agencies that can jam signals usually must seek a legal waiver first. The quest to expand the technology has invigorated a debate about how widely jamming should be allowed and whether its value as a common crime-fighting strategy outweighs its downsides, including restricting the constant access to the airwaves that Americans have come to expect. ... Critics warn of another potential problem, 'friendly fire,' when one agency inadvertently jams another's access to the airwaves, posing a safety hazard in an emergency. [CTIA spokesman Joe] Farren said there are 'smarter, better and safer alternatives,' such as stopping inmates from getting smuggled cellphones in the first place or pinpointing signals from unauthorized callers."

BobB-nw writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "NFL IT guru David Port claims he doesn't have a favorite football team, but on Sunday he'll be working his 25th Super Bowl. As the league's vice president of information technology, Port and his IT staff are responsible for building a temporary network to support NFL staff and thousands of journalists during Super Bowl week. Port starts preparing for each Super Bowl two years in advance, working with the city and venues where IT operations and media professionals will be based. More intensive planning starts about 11 months before the big game. Port explained that the NFL essentially built a small data center with IBM blade servers at the temporary headquarters in a local Marriott near the Super Bowl site. 'We built out an infrastructure with approximately 300 computers, PCs and laptops, and wired and wireless networks that are used for NFL core operations, for game production and business operations. Much of it is also for media,' Port said." CNet is running a related story about the technology behind the Super Bowl, focusing on some of the visual effects viewers will see, as well as the hardware that makes everything happen.

AdamWill writes "Phoronix writes about the mess that is the Linux support situation for Intel's new graphics chipset, the GMA 500 — aka Poulsbo. Near the end they refer to my own post on the topic ('Okay, so after a whole day spent bashing around at this crap, I can very confidently and conclusively say, it's utterly broken'). Intel has a reputation as one of the most clued-up open source-friendly hardware companies, but if they can't sort out the mess surrounding the driver for this chipset — which is already used on the Dell Mini 12 and Sony Vaio P, and will be used on many future Intel-based systems — that reputation will take a serious hit."

An anonymous reader writes "Google has unofficially announced the GDrive by source code. In an in-direct way, Google has publicly advertised the new, much-anticipated online storage drive called the GDrive. If you take a look at the source code of some javascript within the Google Pack, you will clearly see the GDrive referenced. The code categorizes the GDrive as an 'Online file backup and storage' device. It also provides the following descriptions; 'GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents' and 'GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device — be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone.'"

Urchin writes to tell us that physicists working in a new field called "phononics" claim that waste heat from a processor could actually be used to add to its power. "Crunching data coded using photons — photonic computing — is one example, and in 2007 researchers built the first workable optical transistor. But now the idea of computing using heat flow is gaining popularity among applied physicists. Heat travels through solid materials by means of phonons — ripples of vibration passing through a series of atoms. Those ripples can be used to send and store data in digital form: one temperature is read as 0 or 'off' while a second, higher temperature is interpreted as 1 or 'on.' Provided that the thermal memory is well insulated, it can keep its temperature — and data — intact for a long time."

An anonymous reader writes "A hybrid fission-fusion process has been developed that can be used in some traditional fission reactors to process radioactive waste and reduce the amount of waste produced by 99%. This process uses magnetic bottle techniques developed from fusion research. This seems like the first viable solution to the radioactive waste problem of traditional nuclear reactors. This could be a big breakthrough in the search for environmentally friendly energy sources. Lots of work remains to take the concept to an engineering prototype and then to a production reactor."

Tech Ticker writes "The Indian Government last year announced the development of a cheap $10 laptop, but was later rectified as $100 laptop. Now the government has announced that HRD minister Arjun Singh will unveil the prototype of a Rs. 500 ($10) computer. The computer is developed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai. No specifications were revealed but DNA, a daily newspaper, has mentioned that it will be small and portable, will feature Wi-Fi, LAN, and expandable memory, and will operate on 2 watts of power."

tsamsoniw writes "Singapore-based Atlantis Resources Corporation, which brings to the table tidal-turbine technology, is partnering with Scotland-based datacenter developer Internet Villages International) to construct a tidal-powered 150MW 'Blue Datacenter,' InfoWorld reports. If all goes to plan, the facility will eventually be powered entirely by clean energy produced by tidal-current turbines in the Pentland Firth, the stretch of water between the far north Scottish mainland and Orkney. The firth's currents could generate 700 megawatts of electricity by 2020." And reader Mike writes "Here's something to raise a glass to: recently the Rothes consortium of whiskey and scotch distillers announced that they have partnered with Helius Energy to install a power plant fueled entirely by whiskey by-products. The completed plant will use biomass cogeneration to convert draff and pot ale from the distillery into 7.2 MW of electricity — enough to power 9,000 homes."

eldavojohn writes "It's often assumed that representing data reaches a limit when you get to the point that an atom represents one bit in some form or fashion. But Stanford University researchers have used a quantum hologram model to store the characters 'S' and 'U' by encoding the data at a rate of 35 bits per electron."

An anonymous reader writes "Intel has spent years talking up the digital health sector, and now Panasonic has come up with a product to make that category worthwhile. The Toughbook CF-H1 is a fully rugged mobile computer designed for the medical profession. Of course it can be dropped and doused in water, but it's got some other cool tricks too like a built in RFID scanner, wireless smartcard reader and a barcode scanner. It's also using the 1.86GHz Atom, which is rarely seen." I'd like this: a small, low-power tablet suitable for klutzes.