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Fourteen members of Congress have co-sponsored a bill that would override a recent spate of voter identification laws, passed in more than a dozen states to require voters to present government-issued photo ID in order to cast a ballot.

Rep. Rick Larsen, a Washington Democrat, has introduced the “America Votes Act of 2012,” which he and other Democrats hope will counter the wave of new voter ID legislation passed by Republican-led legislatures across the country.

The bill would allow voters to sign a sworn affidavit to prove their identity in lieu of providing government-issued photo identification such as a driver’s license or passport. The voter would then be able to cast a standard ballot and not a provisional ballot, the latter of which can be contested or thrown out for any number of procedural reasons under current voting ID laws.

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More on Elections 2012

Changing a lightbulb in your own place is one thing. Try doing it 1,500 feet in the sky while standing on the roof of the tallest building in North America with only your own balance and wits keeping you on solid ground.

It’s all in a day’s work for Willis Tower electricians John Barker and Mike Hlavacek.

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Valve Software’s hardware division is still in its infancy. Despite having existed for over a year, recruitment is still its primary concern — “prototyping is almost secondary,” longtime inventor/hacker/now Valve employee Jeri Ellsworth told us in an interview this week. As the team ramps up, production becomes more and more prolific, of course; Ellsworth lights up when she talks about the work her team is doing now. She gets verbose when asked about corporate culture at Valve, about how she’s never worked at a company where risk and failure are so acceptable — even encouraged. She’s visibly excited about the prototypes she’s creating at Valve’s new prototyping facility, but manages to contain herself enough to not let slip exactly what her and her team are working on.

When asked what the team’s immediate goals are, she obliquely states, “To make Steam games more fun to play in your living room.” That’s the team’s one-year goal, at least. The challenge is making games that require a mouse and keyboard palatable to people who are used to a controller, or to people who just don’t want to migrate PC controls to the comfort of their living room. Working in tandem with Steam’s newly beta’d “Big Picture Mode,” Ellsworth’s team is creating a hardware solution to the control barriers found in many Steam games. She wouldn’t give any hints as to what that solution is exactly, but she left no options off the table — from Phantom Lapboard-esque solutions to hybrid controllers.

Regardless, it sounds like gamers will have a chance to give feedback on those designs, as Valve’s hardware team is planning a beta for its various products. Ellsworth is hoping to have one for the team’s first product in the coming year — we’ll of course know much more about the product by then, she says. Internal beta tests are already underway, and a variety of the team’s prototypes are available in the office for other Valve employees to tool around with. The next step is getting prototypes into gamers hands — she says Valve already has a production line for short runs, making a beta possible — and iterating on design before launch. As for how the beta will be handled, she posits it’ll be tied to Steam in some way, but no logistics are anywhere near nailed down.

Continue reading Valve’s first hardware beta starting by next year, wearable computing still far off

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Laptops

Valve’s first hardware beta starting by next year, wearable computing still far off originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 17:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple‘s new EarPods certainly look like they’ll offer an improvement over the older earbuds, but just how much of an improvement is there? That’s what the folks at iFixit are determined to find out, putting the EarPods in the spotlight as the subject of its latest teardown. Using an exacto knife, a metal spudger, and an iFixit-branded guitar pick, the iFixit gang pried and pulled apart the redesigned EarPods to see if they really can boast significant improvements over Earbuds of the past.

Almost right off the bat, iFixit expresses doubt that the EarPods’ single-driver setup can offer quality to match other headphones that cost hundreds of dollars for just $29, like Apple claims. After running through the aesthetic changes Apple has made with this latest iteration, the iFixit crew gets to work pulling them apart, starting with the redesigned remote. On the inside, the remote isn’t too terribly different from the one found on the old earbuds – it still sports three buttons and a microphone – but iFixit points out that the sealing on this new remote is much better than the sealing on the old one, meaning that you don’t have to worry about water making your remote non-functional as often.

After the remote has been removed, it’s time to dig into the actual EarPods. Since they can’t be pulled apart, iFixit had to get in there with an exacto knife, something the team doesn’t suggest regular consumers do. Once inside, we’re greeted by a diaphragm, a voice coil, a magnet, and a cabinet, which make up the speakers. iFixit found that the diaphragm consists of “a paper cone and a polymer surround,” which is a first for Apple; normally, the diaphragm is all plastic. Despite the fact that these EarPods look quite different from the regular old earbuds on the outside, on the inside, they look pretty similar.

The image you see above is a shot comparing the new EarPods (bottom) to the first generation earbuds (middle) and the previous generation earbuds for iPhone (top), with iFixit stating that the biggest differences are the EarPods’ new design and the new paper cone. iFixit says that these do make some significant durability improvements over past versions, pointing once again to the better-protected remote and saying that the paper cones mean that you’re less likely to blow out your drivers. However, it’s important to keep in mind that repairing these guys is essentially out of the question, considering that they’re hard to get into and cheap enough that you’ll just want to buy a new pair if yours ever break.

iFixit’s full teardown is very fascinating, so if you have a few minutes, be sure to read through the whole thing. What do you think of Apple’s new EarPods?

Apple’s new EarPods get teardown treatment from iFixit is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
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