Engadget

Some of you thought it would never happen. You thought that these two mortal enemies would spend the rest of their multinational corporate lives alternately at each other throats and eyeing the other with suspicion from across the boardroom. After dropping some claims and winning others, Rambus has signed an agreement with NVIDIA that puts to rest their remaining legal disputes. The deal will allow NVIDIA to use patented Rambus tech in its products for the next five years, without fear of legal action -- though, neither side will say how much that privilege cost. Now that the battle between the two, which began way back in 2008, has finally come to a close we can all finally get back to the very important business of forgetting who or what Rambus is.

The path to the executive apologies is paved with good intentions -- like the one issued today by Dave Morin. The Path CEO / co-founder posted a note apologizing for the contact sharing functionality that got his iPhone app in hot water. The letter titled, simply, "We're Sorry," outlines the company's focus on security (which it takes "very, very seriously") and the intended use for the feature, which uploaded user contact info to help connect people on the service. As a sign of good faith, the company will be deleting all of the uploaded information and making available version 2.0.6 of the service, which allows users to opt-in or out of contact sharing.

Like many other web and media companies, we do panel research to help better serve our users by learning more about people's media use, on the web and elsewhere. This panel is one such small project that started near the beginning of the year. Of course, this is completely optional to join. People can choose to participate if it's of interest (or if the gift appeals) and everyone who does participate has complete transparency and control over what Internet use is being included in the panel. People can stay on the panel as long as they'd like, or leave at any time.

Boston Dynamics' LS3, better known 'round these parts as AlphaDog, has already wowed us with a display of its stability, power and mobility. Thing is, that little clip we caught back in October took place entirely within the safe and purposefully laid out confines of a laboratory. So, the question is, what happens when you take the rather noisy quadruped outside and strap a bunch of weight to it? Well, pretty much the same thing that happened while it was nice and cozy inside -- the beast powered through the reasonably rugged terrain with nary a hitch. By the end of the tests DARPA hopes to have a mighty robotic porter capable of carrying 400 pounds of gear up to 20 miles without refueling. Though, the trek is expected to be slow and arduous as a full 24 hours is target time frame for such a journey. For full PR and to see the bot in action head on after the break.

You may remember that during the TouchPad fire sale, a few slates slipped out with a rather primitive Froyo build on them. Well, HP doesn't seem to know how the tablets hit shelves with Android on board, but its decided to release the source code for the OS nonetheless. Devs had previously called on the company to hand over the code, but the request was refused since HP had never intended for TouchPads to ship with Android, and thus were not obligated to abide by the open-source requirements. As a gesture of goodwill to the community (and under a certain amount of pressure from it) the former purveyor of all things webOS has reversed course though, and let the TouchPad-specific kernel loose on the internet for others to repurpose as they see fit. Hit up the source link to download it now.

It took awhile, and the price tag is quite a bit steeper than previously thought (shocking, right?), but the FAA is finally getting the funding it needs to bring the nation's air traffic control system up to date. Congress just passed the bill to make it happen, allotting $11 billion to the FAA to upgrade the nation's 35 busiest airports air traffic controls from radar to GPS. The deadline for the conversion is June 2015, and when complete, it'll allow for more precise positioning of aircraft -- GPS pings for the planes' locations every second, while radar updates their locations every 6 to 12 seconds. With such technology enabled, airplanes will be able to take-off and land more closely together while utilizing steeper descents than is currently possible to conserve fuel. So, now that we've got the new traffic control system to improve airline punctuality, we just need the FAA and the FCC to team up and eliminate the "Terrible 10,000 feet" and flying might actually be fun.

How do you fancy a 20 percent boost to your processor's performance? Research from the North Carolina State University claims to offer just that. Despite the emergence of fused architecture SoCs, the CPU and GPU cores typically still work independently. The University hoped that by assigning tasks based on each processor's abilities, performance efficiency would be increased. As the CPU and GPU can fetch data at comparable speeds, the researchers set the GPUs to execute the computational functions, while the CPUs did the prefetching. With that data ready in advance, the graphics processor unit has more resources free, yielding an average performance boost of 21.4 percent though it's unclear what metrics the researchers were using. Incidentally, the research was funded by AMD, so no prizes for guessing which chips we might see using the technique first.

With its legal battles intensifying across the globe, Apple has appealed to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, calling for a more consistent approach to the licensing of essential patents. In a letter dated November 11th, Cupertino outlined its issues with today's licensing system, with a particular emphasis on patents licensed on a FRAND basis. According to Apple, the entire telecom industry lacks a "consistent policy" on FRAND licensing -- an issue that, not surprisingly, is especially critical to the company's ongoing court cases in Europe. Because of this inconsistency, Apple argues, patent royalty rates are often negotiated arbitrarily and in secret, resulting in abnormally high rates and, of course, plenty of lawsuits. "It is apparent that our industry suffers from a lack of consistent adherence to FRAND principles in the cellular standards arena," wrote Bruce Watrous, Apple's head of intellectual property. The company went on to suggest an alternative solution, calling for ETSI to establish "appropriate" FRAND licensing rates for companies to follow, adding that these rates should be limited to an industry-wide standard, and that companies should be barred from using industry-essential patents to force injunctions.

Nokia's wielding another axe to its operations, cleaving away a further 4,000 employees from its operations in Finland, Hungary and Mexico. It follows a shedding of roughly 10,000 employees and a troubled withdrawal from Romania as the company pushes more operations towards Asia in an attempt to compete with its competitors. Whilst no more phones will be assembled in Europe, the company isn't closing the facilities outright, they'll be retained for "high value activities" (presumably R&D and other big-ticket projects). Whatever comes of Steven Elop's reign of the world's number one handset maker, it's clear to see that he's got a plan and he's sticking to it.

Update: Nokia got in touch to clarify that the factory in Manaus, Brazil is unaffected by these cuts. The three factories mentioned (in Salo, Reynosa and Komarom) will furthermore be used for the software-portion of production, including installing carrier-and-region-specific features in the Americas, Europe and Eurasia. Hardware assembly will now take place at the company's existing facilities in Beijing (China) and Masan (South Korea).