OCZ has released the new Silencer Mk III series power supplies from its subsidiary PC Power & Cooling. the new Silencer Mk III builds upon the tradition of the Silencer series offered by OCZ Technology

The Silencer Mk III is the first time the Silencer series will offer a modular design (not full modular though). The Mk III uses a single +12V rail with 100 percent Japanese 105°C capacitors. Mk III offers continuous output at a demanding 50°C ambient temperature, while maintaining 80 Plus Bronze-level efficiency up to 85 percent at typical loads. (A review of the Silencer Mk III can be found at HardwareHeaven.com, which they rated the Mk III a 9/10.)

The Silencer Mk III Series is available in 400W, 500W, and 600W models, and comes backed with a leading five year warranty. The Silencer Mk III Series features:

400W to 600W Continuous @ 50C

• Available in 400W, 500W, and 600W Configurations
• Dual-GPU Ready
• 80-Plus Bronze Certified (85% Efficiency); .98 Active PFC
• 120mm double ball-bearing fan
• Up to 90% (10dB) Less Noise per Watt
• +12VDC @54A (Powerful Single Rail)
• Premium Components with 100% Japanese 105°C Capacitors
• Modular Cabling Design
• Automatic Fan Speed Control Circuit
• 5-Year Warranty and Tech Support

“This is the first modular PC Power PSU and we spent extra time and resources to make sure we got it right by combining a highly efficient core with Japanese capacitors, a whisper quiet 120mm fan, and the flexibility of modular cabling, all to create the best Silencer yet, and we are releasing this exciting new series in a range of models up to 600W and pricing them competitively, making the Silencer MKIII PSU’s the ideal blend of performance, features, and overall value for customers,” said Steve Lee, Senior Vice President of Power Management at OCZ Technology Group.

Read more on the PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III at its product page.

Mmm…3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974… whatever. For the first time mathematicians were able to calculate the Pi constant with 10 trillion decimal digits.

Ten trillion would represent a 1 with 13 zeros. If you were to print that number on paper, you would need about 2.87 billion sheets, based on a standard configuration of about 3500 digits per sheet. Such a stack of paper would reach a height of 21.4 miles.

According to an unofficial announcement the calculation of the 10 trillion digits, it took 371 days and an additional 45 hours to verify on a system equipped with two Intel Xeon X5680 processors, 96 GB of memory and 24 2 TB hard drives. Only the first 5 trillion are offered for download as decimals via five separate downloads totaling 1.91 TB at this time.

The record of 10 trillion records doubles the previous record of 5 trillion digits, which was posted in August of this year.

SOURCE via Number World

German researchers believe they can use a technology called “Time Domain Reflectometry” to integrate touch-sensitive objects in clothing, furniture or even cardboard. Time Domain Reflectometry, or TDR for short, has been employed for decades in deep sea cables to detect damages. Electric impulses sent through the cables provide feedback when reflected and the location of damages can be determined depending on the travel time of the signal.

Scientists at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) in Potsdam said that a similar approach also works over shorter distances, which opens up interactive applications for TDR.

The researchers said that they are currently working on a concept to shrink TDR technology enough to fit it on a computer chip and employ light impulses in a similar way as electric signals are used in deep sea cables. At least in theory, TDR could become a possibly solution for the integration in touch applications on virtually any surface material.

SOURCE via Heist Germany

Designed by Florent Mennechet in collaboration with 3E-oeil Studio and Renault Design, the Renault Hydroplane concept is a futuristic vehicle that appears to have come straight from the Star Fox series. Unfortunately this plane won’t be doing any epic barrel rolls in space, but it will be able to cruise around on the water.

Read more…

Amazon is thought to be gearing up to take on Apple’s Siri following the purchase of a start-up specializing in voice recognition. The CTL Blog points to an SEC filing that reveals Amazon’s purchase of Yap, a small company based in Charlotte. Though the filing doesn’t specifically mention Amazon by name and has yet to be acknowledged by either company, Justin Ruckman writes that the filing shows a Yap merger with a company called ‘Yarmouth Dion Inc’ and an address that matches Amazon’s corporate HQ in Seattle.

The acquisition is dated September, but with Apple’s Siri dominating the headlines, there’s speculation that Amazon may further develop what was formally a voice-to-text voicemail transcription service that never made it out of private beta. Yap discontinued its Yap Voicemail service on October 20, 2011. The company’s website currently displays shut-down FAQs for users of the service and nothing else. The Yap Twitter account has not been updated since it announced the October 20 shut-down.

On the surface Yap appears to be nothing more than a voicemail-to-text company, however, it is thought to be much more than that. CTL’s Justin Ruckman writes that Yap is “a lot more than its consumer app” and cites co-founder Igor Jablokov as saying the company has
“IP in every iPhone and Android device.” The Atlantic reports that in 2008, the company received $6.5 million in Series A round of funding led by SunBridge Partners. That’s a lot of money for a voicemail-to-text application. “It is increasingly clear that the fastest, easiest, and safest way to interact with services on a mobile device is using your voice, and Yap makes this both possible and intuitive,” SunBridge General Partner Paul Grim is quoted as saying at the time.

SOURCE via TechCrunch

Amazon’s $79 Kindle e-reader is probably as cheap and cheerful as they get, but the device is actually more expensive for Amazon to build than it is for us to buy.

When Amazon announced the exciting Kindle Fire tablet and the new touchscreen Kindle, the company also announced that the ad-supported basic Kindle e-reader was dropping down to just $79. The ad-supported Kindle was first launched in April of this year and cost $114, which was seen as extremely cheap for an e-reader at the time. When the price dropped to $79, well, we couldn’t believe our eyes. However, it seems that selling the device so cheap means Amazon is actually taking a hit when it comes to production costs.

MainStreet reports it has received confirmation from iSupply with regard to the production cost of the Kindle. iSupply said it did a teardown of the new Kindle and found that the total cost of materials used in each device, including the e-ink display screen and printed chip board, is $78.59, while the total cost of putting it together is $5.66. This brings the production cost of each $79 Kindle to $84.25 and would mean Amazon is taking a loss of $5.25 with each unit sold.

Of course, while Amazon is taking a loss of $5 for each Kindle sold, you have to remember that this is the ad-supported model. Amazon can offer it to us for a low price because it’s receiving advertising revenue from the companies using the device to promote their products or services. What’s more, each person with a Kindle also logs into their Amazon account during device set-up, which means they have a handy direct line to Amazon’s book store, where they can spend more money on books.

SOURCE via Mainstreet

The organization hopes to use the new material to be able to look deeper into space and discover objects that cannot be detected in visible light or high-contrast areas.

Super-black materials are likely to help scientists to discover faint signals in their data, which is difficult with current black paint that only absorbs 90 percent of light. NASA also mentioned that black paints do not remain black in cryogenic temperature environments and change to a “shiny, slightly silver quality” instead.

To create the new material, NASA used a coating based on multi-walled carbon nanotubes, which are placed vertically on various substrate materials such as silicon, silicon nitride, titanium, and stainless steel. This positioning enables the material to capture stray light. According to NASA, the gaps between the tubes trap light and prevent it from “reflecting off surfaces and interfering with the light that scientists actually want to measure.” Since only a minimal portion of the light is reflected, the human eye sees the material as being black.

Such developments may have applications that go well beyond space applications. For example, the blacker the material, the more heat it can dissipate, NASA said. “Super-black materials, like the carbon nanotube coating, can be used on devices that remove heat from instruments and radiate it away.”

For NASA’s purposes this benefit mainly relates to an effect that helps cooling instruments in space, but we are sure that there will be applications in everyday life as well.

SOURCE via NASA