NEW YORK (Reuters) – Actor Brad Pitt was honored on Thursday for his humanitarian work in helping rebuild hurricane-ravaged New Orleans at former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s philanthropic summit, the Clinton Global Initiative.Pitt was presented with a plaque from the U.S. Green Building Council which said the actor and his foundation “Make It Right” had created the “largest and greenest single-family community in the world.”"‘Make It Right’ has exceeded my expectations,” said Pitt who set up the foundation in 2007.”Our criteria from the beginning were at odds, to say the least. We demanded that these homes be sustainable, that they…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Hot on the heels of our post about reading passwords from EEPROM, [n0th1n6] tipped us off about a similar hack used to resurrect an Eee PC from a bad bios flash. After discovering that a factory repair for a dead bios costs about $200, [CutenaCute_7] took on the challenge herself. She disassembled the computer and desoldered the bios chip from the board. After writing a program to flash the chip using C#, she temporarily soldered jumpers to make sure the flash worked. Looks like this is a zero cost hack, plus the time savings from not having to ship…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Many people acknowledge the amazon Kindle as the king of e-readers. However, as the Sony PRS-600 and 300 are about to be released, the challenge has began. Although the details are not that elaborate yet, there are things that have already been confirmed. First, the existence of the devices has been established by Sony. Then some details about what they offer were also given. This is what should make Amazon a little bit concerned about the situation.
As a consumer, the price would be your utmost concern. Kindle 2, which is known for being an older model ever since Kindle…

[Fritz] built this 600 joule capacitive discharge spot welder in a case scavenged from a Lincoln plasma cutter. All of the circuitry was designed by [Fritz] and the schematics are available on his website. He has a few other welding related project also documented on his site that are worth checking out. While this isn’t the first homemade spot welder we have seen, it is definitely the first one with a case mod. If you are not up to the challenge of building one quite as complex as [Fritz]’s example, a microwave can be used as the donor appliance in simpler designs.

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Burbank, California – Muulu (muulu.com) is growing in popularity as a cheaper alternative to eBay. Why? Because the average winning bid for new electronics items, like iPhones, game systems, and iPods, is substantially lower on Muulu than on Ebay. People pay for bids. These payments buy down the possible winning price of the item being auctioned until it is won for well below wholesale price. Other electronic items include HDTVs, laptops, desktop computers, and GPS systems.

The biggest thing that draws people to Muulu is the insane deals. People can win a new Apple iPod Touch for $90, a new…

The 802.11n technology, as it is known, was ratified by the IEEE, a body that oversees all wi-fi standards. It was conceived seven years ago and offers speeds at least six times faster than current approved technology. Electronics firms have sold PCs and routers using the standard for many years, labelled “802.11n draft”. But without the IEEE’s approval, there were no guarantees that future networking equipment would be compatible with the devices. The IEEE’s rubber stamp has changed that. All existing draft 802.11n wi-fi products will work with the final standard, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group that tests…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Are you growing tired of playing all those high-framerate first person shooters? Perhaps you long for the days of blocky graphics and text-based play. You’re in luck because Tradewars 2002 is still around. Many of you will remember this 1980’s BBS based game, playing a limited number of turns per day in an effort to rule the galaxy.
The game may be around, but the way you play it has changed drastically. The advent of custom scripts that interface directly with the game system makes this more of a who can write a better script rather than who is…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Ishikawa Komuro Laboratories are doing some amazing stuff with robots right now. The video above starts out looking like a clumsy and somewhat failed attempt at dribbling a ping pong ball. Once it goes into slow motion however, we see the true action. This robot is dribbling that ball amazingly. Utilizing 1000 FPS cameras, it readjusts and hits the ball on every bounce. As the ball drifts out of the reach of the bot, suddenly we are struck with the lifelike motion.  Personification can be a fleeting thing, appearing so strongly as the little bot tries in vain to…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]