Hasta La Gadget!

Ruben van der Vleuten is a self-described Industrial and Interaction designer who says he wants to improve lives with product development. One day he wondered what happens to mail once it leaves its owner’s hands and goes off into parcel land: who handles it and what does it go through? To answer these pressing questions, he decided to see for himself first-hand using a carefully-taped box and hidden camera.

The process he used to do this was fairly simple for those technically-inclined, utilizing Arduino, the open-source platform/board often used by hobbyists. He created the hidden camera himself, using the Arduino board and a timer circuit. The end result is a fun look at a package’s journey from his hands to the post office and back again, which you can watch in the video below.

While he didn’t provide too many details about how be created the hardware, he did publish a few pictures of the setup, including the camera/circuit by itself, in the box, and finally the box all wrapped up and reinforced with duct tape. He doesn’t mention how long the journey was, but we’re guessing it was probably longer than a single day, which adds up to quite a bit of recording time.

To avoid hours on end of video, he created the timer circuit to record 3 seconds’ worth of video every 60 seconds, changing that setting when the box began moving for longer video recordings – thusly, only short glimpses when the box was sitting unattended, but longer recordings when the action was happening. Looking for the camera in the box pictures? It’s hidden in the middle of the “B” in “Ruben.”

[via Ruben van der Vleuten]

Man uses hidden camera to chronicle a package’s journey is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the man known as Raja Koduri has returned to a position with GPU company AMD from a 4-year appointment with Apple. So this former AMD CTO left to work with Apple four years ago, has worked there ever since (with the likes of some of the top minds on the GPU industry), and is now back to work with AMD. And this isn’t the only former AMD employee to jump back aboard!

It’s not often that we see a major company like Apple losing employees in the first place, much less to a company where they’d hired them from in the first place. But there it is: Raja Koduri has re-joined AMD as Corporate Vice President of Visual Computing. This title also lets us know that AMD is entering a new era: this is the first time they’ve combined GPU hardware and software under a single title.

Last year AMD also re-hired (read: snatched back) a former employee of theirs from Apple in CPU man Jim Keller. If you have a peek back at SlashGear’s original report on Jim Keller, you’ll see that such a switch is always a news bit in and of itself. Both Keller and Koduri working for AMD once again doesn’t necessarily spell anything really negative for Apple, but for AMD things are certainly looking up.

Speaking with Anand Lal Shimpi this week on his return, Koduri made it clear that he sees AMD as having challenges in the near future, but not challenges that will be insurmountable. It’s likely that some real System-on-chip results will be coming out of this new appointment.

Have a peek at our AMD tag portal to see how AMD is rolling in to 2013 with some real power in both the GPU and CPU universes, and expect some strong moves from the company in the next few years as well!

Ex-AMD CTO Raja Koduri returns from 4-year Apple job is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s been three months since the FAA grounded all Boeing 787 Dreamliners due to multiple battery failures in several of the planes. However, progress has been made as the FAA has approved the battery design changes in the new aircraft, and will lift the flight ban on the Dreamliner sometime next week.

Before the FAA will lift the ban, however, they will be publishing a set of instructions for operators to follow in order to implement the design changes in all of the 787 Dreamliners currently out there. And while the FAA will lift ban sometime next week, this doesn’t necessarily mean that airlines will start flying the planes again, as they will have their own protocol as to when they decided to get the Dreamliners back up in the air.

As for the changes that operators will need to make, the FAA says that they will need to “install containment and venting systems for the main and auxiliary system batteries, and to replace the batteries and their chargers with modified components.” Once the changes are made to the planes, they’ll be free to fly again.

Plans for a new battery design began in February, with the first test flights following the incident occurring earlier that month. It was later announced that Airbus would go back to using the traditional nickel-cadmium batteries found in most planes after the manufacturer heard about Boeing’s fiasco with the new lithuim-ion batteries.

FAA approves Boeing 787 battery design changes is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s not secret that Google’s Fiber Internet program is growing by leaps and bounds – and here in Provo, Utah, it’s being initiated in a deal that’s costing Google only $1 USD at the outset. This deal is being made by Google to purchase the city’s municipal fiber-optic system that originally cost around $39 million to build. The Provo City Council will still have to make a final approval – this approval is expected to come to light by next Tuesday.

This will be just the newest in a line of Google Fiber systems being set up, Kansas City, Missouri and Austin, Texas already coming up quick. Google is making a big effort to become the premiere brand for fiber-optic internet in the United States here in 2013 as the rest of the industry remains relatively silent. Just this past month AT&T Fiber Internet was announced for Austin, Texas as well.

With the network being purchased today by Google being nearly ready to rock before they arrive, they’ll be able to set up a final system well before they’ve got marketable sales ready for Austin. Residents of Provo have been paying a charge of $5.35 per household per month on their utilities for an all-inclusive internet, television, and phone service for approximately 12 years – this update should have some effect on how that charge is assessed.

“Provo City’s vision has long been one where our residents have access to reliable high-speed broadband Internet. We know that communities are better – and communities are stronger – when people are connected. With this agreement, we have an opportunity to do things that few communities in this country get to do.” – Mayor John Curtis

Residents have been paying said fee regardless of their use of said services, and would have had to pay a rather sizable fee to activate the internet service they’d already been paying for: $700 USD. With Google onboard, they’ll be grabbing internet service at no additional fee just so long as they pay a much more reasonable $30 hook-up charge.

Google will have five years to build out Provo’s current system in place if the deal is finalized. They will also have just 180 days to take over the network successfully after the deal is signed. At the moment it does not appear that Google has any deals signed for TV service.

[via Provo]

Google buys fiber internet system in Utah for one dollar is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NASA is live-streaming a spacewalk right now, which involves two cosmonauts going out into the deep, dark space in order to fetch some equipment off the exterior of the International Space Station. One of those men is Flight Engineer Pavel Vinogradov, who is 59 years old and is now the oldest person ever to go out on a spacewalk.

Vinogradov is working with Flight Engineer and Cosmonaut Roman Romanenko to replace a broken reflector, as well as retrieve and install experiment equipment on the exterior of the station. Up until today, the oldest person to perform a spacewalk was now-retired NASA astronaut Story Musgrave, who was 58 when he helped fix the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.

Vinogradov has been a cosmonaut for 20 years and today’s spacewalk is his seventh so far. is making his seventh spacewalk. His first-ever spacewalk took place in 1997 aboard Russia’s old Mir space station. Vinogradov will turn 60 aboard the space station this summer, as he’s been assigned for six months up on the ISS.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that Vinogradov’s partner during today’s spacewalk, Romanenko, is experiencing his first spacewalk ever. Romanenko, who is 41, follows in his father’s footsteps, Yuri Romanenko, who went to space in the 1970s and 1980s. The young Romanenko joked that he is “afraid of the darkness,” as the two cosmonauts stepped outside the ISS.

[via FOX News]

Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov becomes world’s oldest spacewalker is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.