The world’s most amazing digital photography company isn’t Canon or Nikon. It’s a tiny company in Tucson, Arizona:Spectral Instruments. They make the craziest digital cameras on the planet. This one has a dynamic range so incredibly big that it can photograph both the sun and the stars in broad daylight.

It’s their 1110 series, a device with a 112 megapixel CCD, black and white, with no Bayer mask or filter of any type, “nothing to detract from the overall image sharpness.” Their sensors are extremely light sensitive and can take … Read More → "This amazing camera can capture both the sun and the stars in broad daylight"

Ruchi Sanghvi was 23 years old when she became the first female engineer at Facebook.

She developed the news feed and saw the company grow from a small start-up into the world’s biggest social network.

Despite her successful career in Silicon Valley, she says when she decided to pursue engineering, she was confronted with old-fashioned views.

“People asked me whether I was going to roll up my sleeves, wear overalls and work on the factory floor,” she told World Update on BBC World Service Radio.
via < … Read More → "Ruchi Sanghvi: Facebook’s pioneer woman"

If you’ve ever done any programming, you know that one of the best things about computers, and also one of the most annoying things about them, is that they don’t make mistakes. A computer will always do exactly what you tell it to, and if you don’t get the right result, it is 100% your fault. At least, this is usually the case. Researchers at Rice … Read More → "“Inexact” computer chip is 15 times more efficient than perfect counterparts"

Well played, Fiat. By paying attention to when Google’s fleet of camera cars were snooping around Södertälje, where Volkswagen’s Swedish operations are headquartered, Fiat zinged their rival good. How? By parking a Fiat 500 right in front of the front door when Google’s Street View cars were out.
via Jalopnik</ … Read More → "Fiat photo bombs Volkswagen with eaborate street view prank"

We may be at the dawn of a new, private era in space.

On May 19, if all goes well, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will liftoff the launchpad, bringing the Dragon spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. Until now, only the U.S., Russia, Japan, and the European Union have accomplished such a goal. If SpaceX succeeds, it will become the first private company to do so.

Wired is interviewing experts … Read More → "Q&A: Former SpaceX executive on historic launch"

In her new book, Sleeping with Your Smartphone, Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow details her years-long research project with The Boston Consulting Group, an attempt to improve the work-life balance at the hard-driving firm with incremental but meaningful changes in attitude and behavior. It was a worthy goal, given that by most measures over-connectedness is a real problem in the workplace. 

… Read More → "How to stop sleeping with your smartphone"

The average episode of Top Gear runs around $1 million to produce. But those high-style, high-flying – and incredibly expensive – aerial shots just got slightly more affordable with the introduction of a new quadrocopter specifically developed for shooting automotive action.

Christopher Kippenberger and his Berlin, Germany-based production company, Kippenberger Racing, have been hard at work over the last few months putting the … Read More → "Forget the helicopter, drones make aerial videos attainable"

You know why we don’t have battery-powered trains? It’s because having battery-powered trains would be a silly idea. When you have something that just goes from point A to point B over and over, it makes more sense to make electricity available over the entire stretch, and Siemens is going to try that idea out with trucks on </ … Read More → "Overhead highway wires turn trucks into electric hybrids"

A paralyzed patient equipped with an implanted brain chip has been able to use a robotic arm to reach for and pick up a bottle of coffee, bring it close enough to her face so she could drink from a straw, and then place the bottle back on the table.

The quadriplegic patient was outfitted with an electronic brain implant that can drive a robotic arm … Read More → "Brain chip helps quadriplegics move robotic arms with their thoughts"