Hardware

Working directly with hardware is hard. Each project brings with it mundane questions of which compiler to use, what communications protocols to work with, and how to load code. Developers also need to figure out how to debug the live system without affecting the program being executed.

In the past this has required expensive and proprietary software, but thanks to commodity hardware and projects such as OpenOCD, developing programs that run directly on embedded hardware is easier than ever before.

Jaime Esper, a technologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a CubeSat concept that would allow scientists to use less-expensive cubesat (tiny-satellite) technology to observe physical phenomena beyond the current low-Earth-orbit limit.

The CubeSat Application for Planetary Entry Missions (CAPE) concept involves a service module that would propel the spacecraft to its  target and a separate planetary entry probe that could survive a rapid dive through the atmosphere of an extraterrestrial planet, all while reliably transmitting scientific and engineering data.

Some good news for power users ahead of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next month: the company has just updated its 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, completing the 2015 MacBook refresh it began with the new MacBook Air, 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, and the MacBook.

Air conditioning is a modern wonder. It’s also an expensive luxury and a total drain on the environment. Most buildings address thermal control on a structure level by building in HVAC systems, but two designers from Paris think there might be a better way, or at least an alternative way.

Traditional home security cameras are valuable, but they also yield hour after hour of footage owners have to wade through when they're looking for specific information. Oregon-based Flir says it has the solution to that problem. Its new FX Wi-Fi camera uses intelligent motion tracking to create a simultaneous replay of everything it has captured throughout the day so that users can easily review that footage in just minutes.

A research note by Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities has leaked, indicating a number of planned changes that Apple will allegedly be making to their flagship device during its next iteration; including a 12MP rear camera, a long-awaited memory boost to 2GB of RAM, and a rose gold colour option for the Apple geek that must have all his gear match. Other changes that are listed include rearranged internals to address BendGate, another microphone to improve speech quality, and Force Touch input in order to bring that technology from the Mac to their primary breadwinner.

CHIP, the new $9 (€8) mini-PC that runs Linux and that has some incredible hardware specs, is making a killing on Kickstarter, and it looks like it's still going.

Who doesn't love fast Wi-Fi? Thanks to 802.11ac, real-world speeds are finally cracking the 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) barrier. With the new 802.11ac multi-user multiple-input and multiple-output (MU-MIMO) Wave 2 finally arriving in chipsets, Gbps speeds may finally become commonplace rather than exceptional. Leading the way is Linksys with the first Wave 2 router to market: The Linksys Max-Stream AC2600 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router (EA8500).

Artists have been incorporating the golden ratio in their work for many hundreds of years, and it is thought that when proportions are in line with this ratio, it tends to be more aesthetically pleasing. With that in mind, the clock that [Philippe] created must mathematically be the best looking clock we’ve ever featured, even if it is somewhat difficult to tell time from it.

Criminals, activists, and whistle-blowers have a new tool to help foil police by shutting down laptops before they are examined.

"USBKill" is a script that turns an innocent-looking thumb drive into a kill switch that, when unplugged, forces computers to shut down.