ScentCone writes "A University of Tokyo team has developed a flexible, laminated network of pressure and temperature sensors suitable for jobs such as robot fingers. Circuits as pressure sensors, and semiconductors as temperature sensors are not new, but the thin, networked laminate of the two is novel."

An anonymous reader asks: "An acquaintance of mine runs a fair sized web community. Having nearly 280,000 users in a single MySQL database with about 12 mirrors accessing it, performance has become an big issue. I was wondering what practical methods could be used to lessen the load and decrease user query times. Funds are limited, so he'd rather not pay for a commercial database system at this time."

An anonymous reader writes "Old school is new school, fool. It's time to take that retired NES controller of yours that you broke so mercilessly smashing it on the carpet in frustration at never ever ever being able to beat Ikari Warriors, and recycle that biz. Be good to the environment and turn that thing into a laser mouse, why don't you? And yes, the A button is left click, and the B is your right, and your raging case of carpal tunnel is about to get a whole lot more fun."

Joey Braff writes "Max did a great guide on converting a cpu cooler into a graphics card cooler. Produced better results than expensive graphics coolers even though its lighter and cheaper. Test results available."

ummit writes "Erik Fitzpatrick did a nice job turning an old Smith-Corona manual typeriter into a functional keyboard, and composed a nice writeup about it, with pictures."

Dan writes "The bochs x86 emulator has been ported to the psp, and allows for x86 disk images to be run.linux and dos images have been confirmed to work."

Kerhop wonders: "I'm looking to implement an off-site file storage location but want it to be convenient for me to access with the right security credentials by placing a portable file server in my car that has at 802.11b ability and is battery powered (but also recharged via cigarette lighter adapter). I've found the Sony FSV-PGX1. I am curious, though -- what solutions have others found?"

prostoalex writes "The slot machines of the future won't be dumb one-armed bandits anymore, CNet reports. New generation of slot machines, to be deployed in major Vegas casinos, will feature server-based gaming with games, new features and, most important, the odds being downloaded from a central server location, not determined by internal machine algorithm any more."

Netmonger writes "This Japanese guy overclocked a Pentium 4 to 7.132GHz!! The system managed to calculate pi to 1 million decimal places in 18.516 seconds, setting the world's record." The article notes that a Pentium 4 had been overclocked faster earlier this year, but at that speed it was not possible for the machine to function beyond BIOS. Of course, they'd yet to try diverting power from the dilthium crystal reactor to the deflector array.

prostoalex writes "Motorola is combining Intellon broadband-over-powerline chips with its own Canopy wireless systems to create an end-to-end broadband delivery system, where last mile delivery would be covered by wireless and broadband pipe would belong to electric utility. HomePlug AV standard will offer 200 Mbps downstream speed."

An anonymous reader writes ""Lian Li's V1200 Plus represents the apex of enclosure technology to date. Lian Li is a long time favorite of computer builders, especially those who are willing to spend more so that they will get the features and design benefits of a high end product. This case has a formidable price tag, but with its great looks, innovative layout, and brand reputation it has more that a few things going for it. At 210 x 490 x 625mm this case has the depth of a full-tower, but not the height. This makes it perfect for extensive systems and for people who need to tinker inside the case.""

Maxtorn writes This review is published to cover a "300GB Maxtor drive, but provides a roundup covering a few high end, high capacity drives from Maxtor, Seagate, and Hitachi. Synthetic / real world performance, thermal results, and noise output are all covered on drives ranging from 200-500GB in capacity and with 8-16MB of cache memory. A solid reference for those shopping for a new drive."

Paul writes "Logitech had a busy day announcing three new products designed for gamers. The company introduced the Logitech G15 keyboard, G5 and G7 G-Series gaming mice. TechSpot had a brief talk with Erik Charlton, senior product-marketing manager at Logitech, who shared a few ideas and details on Logitech's newly announced products."

Device666 writes "In order to lock out both copied games as well as homebrew software, including the GNU/Linux operating system, Microsoft built a chain of trust on the Xbox reaching from the hardware to the execution of game code, in order to avoid the infiltration of code that has not been authorized by Microsoft. The link between hardware and software in this chain of trust is the hidden "MCPX" boot ROM. The principles, the implementations and the security vulnerabilities of this 512 bytes ROM will be discussed in this wikipedia article entitled How to fit three bugs in 512 bytes of security code."

An anonymous reader writes "Stirling engines are not a neglected or forgotten technology after all, according to a story at PESN. With 20 years of in-the-field fine-tuning, Stirling Energy Systems is now ready to go big -- real big. They signed a purchase agreement Tuesday with Southern California Edison (SEC), to install a 20,000 dish array that will cover 4,500 acres and will be capable of generating 500 megawatts of electricity -- more than all other U.S. solar projects combined -- making this the largest solar installation in the world. Each collector has a 37-foot-diameter array of mirrors to focus the sun's rays on the Stirling engine, which turns the heat into rotational torque for electricity generation. According to a spokesperson for SCE, this purchase will be in their commercial interest, requiring no subsidy in order to compete, implying that the efficiencies of the technology will give them an edge in the market."

nerdyH points to this smile-inducing story at LinuxDevices which begins "An inexpensive house-brand 802.11b/g wireless router from Fry's (Outpost.com) has been adopted by a group of Linux hackers that aims to make Fry's 'AirLink' devices 'as capable as name-brand gadgets.' The AirLink101 AR315W is based on a Marvell board that can run Linux or eCos, and has a six-port 10/100 Ethernet switch built in. It's listed for $45 online, but is reportedly on sale for $20 in some Fry's stores."

McSpew writes "A small company from Utah (no, not that one) has announced the BlackDog USB-powered Linux server. It includes a fingerprint reader, a 400MHz PowerPC, 64MB of DRAM and 256MB or 512MB of flash and it runs Debian. The host PC sees it as a CD-ROM drive."

prostoalex writes "MSNBC reviews ZyXel's P-2000W, a VoIP-over-WLAN phone that supports 802.11b and 802.11g. Gary Krakow tests the $200 phone with a VoIP account from T-Glo (his phone came pre-programmed with that). Looks like a pretty decent solution for anyone who's on the go, but has consistent access to Wi-Fi networks: 'I took the phone with me to a number of friends' homes and tried it there. All I had to do is ask the phone to find nearby networks and join them. It was even able to find others' WiFi networks as I walked though Manhattan (no, I didn't try connecting).'"

kv9 writes "Finally after many, many yeas of running on everything-but-your-toaster NetBSD is there too. Technologic Systems has made a toaster that is controlled by NetBSD and powered by one of their ARM boards, the TS-7200. Everything is controlled through sysctl, there are LEDs that show you what is going on, the toaster can play MP3s while it fries the bread and even has Apache/PHP installed. More information in the press release [pdf warning] and on this running NetBSD on the TS-7200 page."

Spinnerbait writes "This morning NVIDIA let fly with a cut-back version of their GeForce 7800GTX flagship card, dubbed the GeForce 7800GT. HotHardware has a full review and showcase posted of this new more reasonably price GeForce 7 series card. Overall it's performance was impressive but there is a tad bit of confusion in the channel about clock speeds on these new boards, so keep you eye on retail board specifications." The embargo's off: here's TheTechLounge's review, and GDHardware's, too -- I'm sure you'll find links to others in the comments below.