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America's renewable energy capacity overtakes coal for the first time
America's renewable energy capacity has overtaken coal for the first time ever. According to a report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the addition of new solar, wind and hydro capacity in the first four months of the year pushed renewable energy's share of total available installed capacity to 21.56%. Coal's share, meanwhile, has dropped to 21.55 percent, down from 23.04 percent last year.
Tesla’s big battery is undercutting Australia’s energy cartels
When Tesla installed the world's largest lithium-ion battery in South Australia last year, it came with the promise that it would revolutionize the way electricity is produced, stored and sold in a region known for blackouts and market monopolizing. Less than two months later, that promise has been delivered to the tune of a multimillion-dollar saving, as the Tesla big battery essentially noped an attempt by Australia's energy cartel to capitalize on power fluctuations and send the market into overdrive.
Magnetized particles could solve our data storage problems
Scientists have discovered an unusual magnetic behavior that could solve one of the biggest problems faced by our data-hungry world: data storage. In recent decades we've been getting progressively better at storing data but unless we find new and more efficient ways to store the increasing volume of data we're producing every day, it won't be long until data centres reach their capacities and progress grinds to a halt. The new discovery, which has the potential to store data in fast-moving magnetic particles, could remedy that.
Verizon admits it can't handle LTE demand in major cities
We've all seen those commercials where Verizon boasts about the breadth of its network, but what of the depth? Turns out, at least in some cities, that Big Red's LTE is so over-taxed that users are being downgraded to 3G. Executive Fran Shammo has admitted that Verizon's capacity in places like New York and San Francisco is running out, but promised that the troubles should be fixed by the end of 2013. The company has pledged an extra $500 million in investment to remedy the issue, in addition to promising that, when it comes to capacity, Verizon will be "ahead of the curve" going into next year -- presumably before holding up a sign marked AWS Band 4 and winking at an imaginary camera.
Felix Baumgarter breaks YouTube record as 8 million viewers watch his space jump (video)
Felix Baumgartner might not have broken Joe Kittinger's world record for the longest time spent in freefall, but he did smash a fourth milestone during his dive. In addition to records for the highest ever jump, longest distance fall and fastest downward speed, the stunt was watched by eight million YouTubers at the same time. While the site hasn't divulged exact stats, that figure is apparently higher than those who watched President Obama's inauguration. That said, if you weren't one of the eight million, you can head on past the break to watch the highlights reel -- unless you're already bored of watching a man fall, unaided, you know, from space.
Report: Foxconn spending $210 million on Apple production line
China Daily is claiming that Foxconn will pump $210 million into building a production line in China's Jiangsu province. Local authorities have stated that the plant in Huai'an city will produce components for Apple, no doubt heralding a raft of rampant speculation as to Cupertino's intentions. The building will occupy 40,000 square meters, produce $1.1 billion worth of gear per year and require 35,800 employees -- more than Nokia and Sony have fired in recent months, combined.
Plum Mobile lineup hands-on at CTIA 2012
Little-known Plum Mobile appeared at CTIA with the four dual-SIM Android sets pictured above and the Might, a Galaxy Note twin we had a peek at a little earlier today. From the top left we have the Debut, which is a 7-inch WVGA tablet (that can be used as a phone) with Android 2.2 powered by an 800MHz CPU, a 5-megapixel camera and a 4,250mAh battery. Pricing for the Plum Debut is somewhere in the neighborhood of $180. The $90 Plum Capacity runs Android 2.2 with a 650MHz CPU, it also offers a 3.2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, a 3.5-inch HVGA display and comes in "several" color options. The Wicked 3G is a quadband GSM dualband 3G set with a 3-megapixel camera around back, personal hotspot and a 2.8-inch resistive display. Rounding out the set is the Android 2.3 Plum Orbit -- this $50 dollar set lacks 3G but does have a quadband GSM radio, a 2-megapixel camera and a 3.2-inch display. All of Plum Mobile's sets are fairly low cost but the materials and build quality were decent. The Wicked 3G -- aside from having the best name of the group -- was somehow our favorite of the bunch. Sure it is pretty shiny plastic, but the shape was just great to hang onto which is something of a rarity in our world of giant slabs. We doubt that we'll be seeing these phones in any brick and mortar stores on these shores, so we thought we'd treat you to some glossies of them all. Check the gallery just below. Zachary Lutz contributed to this report.
PSA: If you purchased extra Gmail storage, your Google Drive just got bigger
5GB, huh? Not quite enough for you? If you were wise enough to up the capacity of your Gmail inbox + Picasa allotment before today, your Google Drive experience just got a lot more awesome. A trio of editors here at Engadget HQ managed to upgrade their Gmail boxes a couple of years ago, and at the time (read: it's no longer an available option), Google was offering an extra 20GB for use across its properties for a mere $5 per year. Upon loading Google Drive today, we each found a healthy 25GB waiting to be filled, with no expectation of additional payments to Google. Be sure to let us know if you're seeing a similar boost in capaciousness down in comments below, particularly for those who splurged on one of the more current Gmail add-on plans.
Dropbox doubles referral rewards, offers up to 32GB for those dripping in charisma
That whole 'refer a friend' thing must be working. Or maybe it isn't. Either way, Dropbox has felt the need to double the extra capacity you get as a reward for persuading your buddies that cloud storage really is 153x better than a USB stick. For each successful referral, you'll now get 500MB up to a maximum of 16GB. Pro users will get 1GB per referral up to a limit of 32GB. Get in there quick before someone else in your gang starts promoting Google Drive and its rumored document editing capabilities.[Thanks, Ninad]
Seagate hits one terabit per square inch, compares self favorably to the Milky Way
You know that big new hard drive you just picked up? Get ready to feel bad. Seagate today is talking up the fact that it has managed to cram one terabit (that's one trillion bits, for the record) into a square inch. That super-dense storage comes thanks to heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, a successor to the perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) being utilized in current hard drives. The manufacturer sees the technology hitting the market later this decade, "doubl[ing] the storage capacity of today's hard drives" in its wake. Just how many bits are we talking about here? Let Seagate put things into astronomical perspective: "The bits within a square inch of disk space, at the new milestone, far outnumber stars in the Milky Way, which astronomers put between 200 billion and 400 billion." More info can be found in the press release after the break.
The Gathering 2012 to bring world's fastest internet to Norway, leave Swedish laundry out to dry
Dreamhack's record breaking 120Gbps connection was fast enough to replace a certain household appliance, but next to what's Norway's cooking up it looks almost antiquated. The Gathering, Norway's annual week-long LAN party, plans to set a new world record for the "fastest internet access in the universe" with a 200Gbps connection. "No way we would let the Swedes keep the lead on this," says Gathering head of information Simon Eriksen Valvik, "we didn't just raise the bar a little, we moved it a story up." The connection is reportedly faster than the combined bandwidth of Thailand, and will be capable of downloading 5,120 songs a second. Don't bee too envious though, the ludicrously quick network is only temporary. Representatives from Altibox, the Norwegian network that's partnering with The Gathering to break the record, say that Norway simply doesn't have the capacity to support these kinds of speeds on a day to day basis. The gap is being filled with foreign internet capacity, piped in by Level 3. Tickets for the event are already sold out, so speed freaks desperate for the fastest internet in the universe will just have to settle for the fastest internet in the neighborhood. At least until next year.
Nokia Siemens promises better TD-LTE and CDMA coverage, no alarms or surprises
So, Nokia Siemens Networks wasn't fibbing when it said it would re-focus its efforts on mobile broadband. It's just announced a 'six pipe' radio head upgrade for time division LTE (TD-LTE) base stations that can boost capacity by 80 percent and coverage by 40 percent compared to a traditional three-sector site. Alternatively, the same replacement can be used to reduce a station's running costs, by allowing it to cover three sectors using a single radio head. As far as we're concerned, anything that recalls OK Computer is a good thing, but if it speeds up carriers' shift to LTE then it's even better. Meanwhile, for those who still want to invest in CDMA, Nokia Siemens is pushing it's 1X Advanced technology, which also promises big improvements in voice and data capacity as well as energy efficiency. Read on for more technical details in a PR double-shot.
Cisco, Telia to activate 'world's fastest internet connection' at 120Gbps, sounds pretty Swede
If the Swedes can dry a load of laundry on a 40Gbps internet connection, just imagine what they could do with 120Gbps. Melt polar caps? Solve the debt crisis? Dry three loads of laundry? The possibilities may be limitless, but we'll all find out soon enough, because Cisco and Telia are aiming to break the 120Gbps barrier by the end of this weekend. It's all part of this week's DreamHack, a Swedish digital festival that the Guinness Book recognizes as the "world's largest LAN party." This year, the two companies will attempt to set up a 300 kilometer-long connection from Jönköping to Stockholm, designed to serve (in theory, anyway) up to 750,000 people at blazing speeds -- of course, only 20,000 or so will be at DreamHack. The project has been in the works since last summer, with Telia constructing the fiber network, and Cisco handling hardware duties with a pair of power-packed CRS-3 routers (scalable to a total capacity of up to 322Tbps!). The companies say that the connection, if successful, would set a record for network "capacity utilization," allowing all 750K users to stream music simultaneously and to download an entire movie in just .047 seconds. It'll take us a lot longer to pick up our jaws from the ground.
Salt enables six times the storage capacity for snail-unfriendly hard drives
Salt: sure, you might use it to cure meats for your latest solar-powered circumnavigation. But hold onto your kippers, Magellan, because Singaporean scientists have found that sodium chloride -- ordinary table salt! -- can also dramatically increase storage capacity. You see, typical hard drives have randomly-arranged magnetic grains, which allow data density of about 0.5 terabit per square inch. But a high-resolution e-beam lithography process, aided by our good friend NaCl, arranges the grains in a tighter, more orderly fashion, upping the density to 3.3 terabits per square inch. Called nanopatterning, this technique enables a 1TB drive to hold 6TB without additional platters; it also works with current manufacturing technology, meaning no expensive upgrades. If that's got you dreaming of a higher-capacity future, hit the source link for more glorious technical details. We'll warn you, though: the pictures of luscious, bee-stung lips stop here.
Toshiba unveils MQ01ABD HDD series, packs 1TB on a 9.5mm frame
It's been barely four months since Toshiba introduced its MK7559GSXP -- a tightly-packed, 750GB hard drive that, believe it or not, has already been eclipsed by the MQ01ABD series. Unveiled yesterday, the company's new lineup of 2.5-inch HDDs offers up to 1TB of storage capacity, thanks to an architecture that squeezes 500GB out of every platter. Standing at 9.5mm tall, the 5,400RPM drives also boast an areal density of 744Gb per square inch, and are designed to maximize energy efficiency, burning just 0.55 watts in idle mode. Gamers and entertainment gurus, meanwhile, would benefit from the MQ01ABD's enhanced acoustics, which max out at 19dB in idle, and 24dB while seeking. No word yet on pricing, but the beasts are scheduled to go into mass production by the middle of this month. For more of the nitty gritty, gallop past the break for the full press release.
Get back your HD info in Lion
Looking for that handy readout at the bottom of every Finder window telling you how many items are in the active folder, and how much free space is on your hard drive? In OS X 10.7 Lion, it's turned off by default (part of the cleaner, scrollbar-free new UI style). Easy enough to restore it, though: just choose Show Status Bar (⌘-/) from the View menu, and continue on with your fully-informed computing day. More Lion tips coming all week long!
OnLive CEO reveals 'entirely new approach' to wireless, credits Rearden for toppling Shannon's Law
"In advance, yes -- you're right, it's impossible. But nonetheless, we have ten radios all working at the same frequency, all at the Shannon limit... and there's no interference." You may not fully grok the significance of that statement, but anyone heavily involved in solving the wireless bandwidth crisis is probably dropjawed. For a little background, there's a perceived limit in wireless known as Shannon's Law, which largely explains why no one can watch a YouTube clip on their EVO at Michigan Stadium. For whatever reason, it's been assumed that this law was fundamentally unbreakable, but it looks as if an unlikely member of society may have just overrode expectations. OnLive's CEO Steve Perlman recently revealed a breakthrough from Rearden Companies -- in short, they've figured out a workaround, and in testing, it's doing things like "removing dead zones" altogether. His slide, shown during a presentation at Columbia, notes that the implications here are "profound," and we couldn't agree more. Do yourself a solid and hit play in the video below the break -- we've fast-forwarded to where this section begins.
iPod classic still the 5th most popular US MP3 player
Speculation has been poking around lately that the iPod classic's time is not long for this world, but before you start etching out the gravestone, take a look at these recent sales rankings from the NPD Group. According to the numbers, the iPod classic is still the fifth most popular MP3 player in the US, right behind all four versions of the iPod touch. Apple, in fact, claims 9 out of the top 10 spots on the list, but while the shuffle and the nano are down in the 6-9 spots, the iPod classic still reigns supreme when you don't need to have apps. That makes sense -- despite my iPhone, I still carry around an old 80 GB iPod, and I'd still maintain that for people who really want to carry their whole music library in their pocket, there's no match for the iPod classic and its, well, ... classic click wheel design. In fact, as we suggested, in opposition to all of the naysayers proclaiming the death of the old school iPod, a refresh is much more likely: Apple could add much more capacity, especially considering the improvements in memory lately. And while apps are nice, and 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity make for things like streaming music, some people just want to sit back and listen to gigabytes' worth of MP3 files. Long live the iPod classic!
32 GB versus 32GB: Almost everyone is writing it wrong
Fair warning, dear reader: this may be the most pedantic post in the history of TUAW. Maybe in history, period. But I can't help it: someone is wrong on the internet. Here's a fun trick. Go to the Apple menu on your Mac and select "About This Mac." A little window will come up listing your processor and RAM specs. Mine describes a 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4 GB of RAM. If I click "More Info" to open System Profiler, I'll also learn that I have a 250 GB hard drive. Now go to Apple's product page for the MacBook Pro and click on "Buy Now" to see descriptions of tech specs. The 17-inch model is currently listed with a 2.53GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. Other than the obvious differences in specs, did you notice anything different? All the spaces disappeared. 2.53GHz instead of 2.6 GHz. 4GB and 500GB instead of 4 GB or 250 GB. Almost everyone in the computer industry is writing tech specs this way on their product pages, and they're all doing it wrong. Click "Read More" to find out why.
A call for more storage in iOS devices
Back in the olden days, when I bought my first Disk ][ to hang onto my Apple ][ Plus, I was amazed at how much the 140KB floppy drive could store. After using it for a while, I was sure that it was big enough to hold every program I'd ever buy, and most of the programs my kids would need as well. Nowadays, of course, I have a 32GB iPhone 3GS and a 64GB iPad, and I'm out of room. The release of Riven brought into focus just how crazy this all is. Riven weighs in at 1.01GB and requires you to have 2GB of free storage just to install it. I don't blame the game itself -- in fact, I played it when it was the first DVD-based game ever for the Mac, replacing five CD-ROMs. The graphics were superb, and I understand that they require lots of memory to hold them, but really! I took a look at some of the larger iOS apps I currently have installed, and Treasure Island, the Experience is the largest, weighing in at 468MB, or nearly half a GB. The next seven biggest range between 393.7MB and 286.3MB, adding up to over 2GB. And I'm not even a game player -- if you installed the HD version of Rage recently, you had to clear up 744MB of space for that one alone. These apps are mostly recent releases, and I don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
