A brand new desktop / laptop computer (or Mac Mini) arrives on your desk, full of potential and promise for any project you may want to tackle, or simply day-to-day duties. When combined with the ASUS ProArt Display PA278QV, priced at $189 (was $269), that potential becomes much more appealing while remaining within budget.
Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary on April 1 with a series of events around the world showcasing the people who’ve used their tools to create some real game changers, all 50 years after the company was founded on that same date in 1976, when Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Ron Wayne got the first Apple computer running in a family garage. Their first goal was to create machines that the rest of us could use without requiring a Ph.D., simply to see if it was possible, you know.
Balconies in European towns now feature compact solar panels that allow residents to feed electricity directly into their apartments without any effort. People hang one or two panels from the balcony railings or place them on ledges using simple brackets. It’s all connected to a small inverter that sits between the panels and a conventional electrical socket in the house. When the sun hits the panels, it generates direct current, which the inverter converts to alternating power, which feeds directly into the mains. No roof work, no contractor visits, and no major renovations are required.
Kara Zor-El hits the couch for what’s looking to be a serious heart to heart with her cousin Clark Kent as the opening scenes of the just released Supergirl trailer play out. Clark’s on her case because he’s worried she’s spending way too much time floating off on her own and might never really find a place to call home of her own. Kara shoots back that she’s got no one left to call her own and where she goes is wherever Krypto, her trusty sidekick, decides to go next.
A gamer known as Secret Hobbyist spent months designing and testing a custom circuit board that combines the best parts of two different PlayStation models into a single hybrid console, one that loads games from a microSD card and outputs video over HDMI to any modern display.
Ben has been chasing a dream with his latest device, a handheld PC that runs full desktop software without sacrificing anything. He chose to base it on the LattePanda Mu single-board computer, which has serious x86 computing capability and can handle up to 16 gigabytes of RAM and some onboard storage. He installed a 1TB solid state disk and a wireless card for complete connectivity.
Back in the late 1980s, a group of engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) grabbed a camera and decided to document their workspace before the computing landscape changed around them. The resulting footage is a remarkable walk through Building 230, the room responsible for keeping Voyager, Galileo, and Ulysses on course through the solar system, guided by a staff member who clearly knows every piece of equipment by heart.
Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology, working alongside data storage specialists at Cerabyte, have created the world’s smallest QR code, and it is not even close to visible without specialized equipment. The entire thing measures just 1.98 square micrometers, with each individual pixel coming in at 49 nanometers across, smaller than most bacteria and roughly three times more compact than the previous record holder.
Niels Leenheer wanted to see how far he could push a modern web browser, and as it turns out, the answer is much further than most people would have expected. He completely reconstructed the visual environment of the original 1993 DOOM game using only cascading style sheets (CSS). Every wall, floor tile, barrel, and charging imp is a standard HTML div element. Here’s the interesting part: JavaScript controls all of the game logic, while the browser handles all of the drawing using pure CSS. The end result is a game that runs well on any modern tab and feels quite similar to the real thing.
Luxo Jr. has been bouncing around in the hearts of animation fans since the 1986 Pixar short, and LEGO has now given everyone a chance to own a version of that iconic lamp through a new Ideas set (#21357). The 613 piece build, priced at $55.95 (was $70), comes together at a satisfying pace for an adult set, with most of the time spent shaping the lamp’s articulated arm and weighted base.