Hardware

Google is starting to show developers what they need to do to create swappable parts for its upcoming modular smartphones, currently called Project Ara. On Ara's website, it's just posted the Module Developers Kit, which contains the information that manufacturers need to get started creating modular parts. "Ara’s success is predicated on a rich, vibrant, and diverse ecosystem of modules from a myriad of developers," one document in the kit reads.

If you've been waiting impatiently to get a pair of Google Glass, mark your calendar and grab your checkbook.

Google announced late Thursday that it will sell prototypes of the wearable computers for one day next week in an effort to expand its cadre of early testers, known as Explorers .

Samsung's newest flagship is finally here. With the Galaxy S5, Samsung hopes to break out of the boring spec-bump-style upgrade that the company said hindered sales of the Galaxy S4. While the design is mostly the same (and we might say a little worse), Samsung's solution to consumer indifference is a boatload of extra features. With the S5, Samsung added things like a fingerprint scanner, a heart rate monitor, and water resistance.

Before Glass becomes a publicly available product, Google's quietly embarked on a campaign to get its iconic eyewear into the hands of those who can use it to tackle complex issues.

After it gifted five pairs to researchers at Newcastle University, Google's allowed its wearable to undergo its first UK medical trial, where it's being used to support people suffering from Parkinson's disease. Researchers want to help patients live more independently, and they're already seeing results.

Intel has beefed up its open source single-board computer and cut its price in half.

The Minnowboard Max features an open hardware design and is targeted at software application development pros and enthusiasts who want to code for the "deeply embedded" market.

If standard gigabit Ethernet isn't cutting it for you, Intel will soon give you another option: this week at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas, the company announced a new feature called "Thunderbolt Networking" that will soon be available to all PCs with Thunderbolt 2 controllers.

A competitor in an Australian triathlon apparently failed to complete an event over the weekend after being felled by an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Everything Geraldton reports that Raija Ogden was approaching the finish line of the Endure Batavia Triathlon when a “ … remote-controlled copter struck her head and she fell to the ground.” Raija later received three stitches.

Sixty years from now, we'll look back on today's 3D-printed tissue and organ technology and think it's as primitive as the iron lung seems to us now.

Six decades out, replacing a liver or a kidney will likely be a routine procedure that involves harvesting some patients cells, growing them and then printing them across artificial scaffolding.

Intel's Haswell CPUs have been good to Ultrabook makers. Use them, and you get an essentially "free" battery life boost without sacrificing any performance. Most of the PC OEMs—Acer, Dell, Apple, and Lenovo among them—have simply dropped Haswell processors into lightly-modified versions of their Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks and called it a day.

Andrew “bunnie” Huang and Sean “xobs” Cross want to sell you a laptop you can completely trust.

Earlier this year, the two Singapore-based engineers fashioned a laptop made almost entirely from open source hardware, hardware whose designs are freely available to the world at large. They called it Project Novena. Anyone could review the designs, looking for bugs and security flaws, and at least in theory, that meant you could be confident the machine was secure from top to bottom, something that’s more desirable than ever in the post-Edward Snowden age.