Hasta La Gadget!

Since I already have an AR.Drone 2.0, I’m not really sure I need another quadrocopter. But that doesn’t mean I can’t want another quadcopter – especially one that I can fit in the palm of my hand.

This awesome bit of tech is called the Crazyflie, and it’s a complete pocket-sized quadrotor. This little thing weights just 19 grams, and measures about 9cm x 9cm (~3.5″ square.) It can fly up to 7 minutes at a time on a 20 minute charge, and can even lift a miniscule payload of up to about 10 grams. Under its hood (if it had a hood), it sports a microcontroller, accelerometer, gyroscope, and a tiny 2.4GHz receiver for accepting commands from your computer or other wireless device.

It’s incredibly fast, agile and stable as you can see from the video clip below:

Sure, it sounds like a swarm of angry mosquitoes buzzing around, but that’s kind of what I love about it.

The tiny quadrotor is sold in kit form, and is completely open source, so you can create your own custom applications and modifications. Keep in mind that you’ll need soldering skills to assemble it, and its creators clearly state that this thing is not a kids toy. Though it might be one for us grown-ups.

You can pre-order a Crazyflie kit from now through February 18, with an estimated ship date of April 25. Prices start at $149 for the basic kit, and go up to $173 for the 10 DOF version, which has extra sensors fo altitude and heading measurements – though you’ll have to write your own code to take advantage of the added sensors.

A new challenger steps in the niche market… ring of portable consoles built to run emulators of older systems. But like the relatively famous Pandora handheld, the GCW-Zero aims not just to let players enjoy old games but also let those with programming skills tweak and play with its software.

The GCW-Zero runs on OpenDingux, a Linux distribution that was originally made for Dingoo’s gaming handhelds. Hardware-wise the GCW-Zero has a 1GHz Injenic CPU, a Vivante GC860 GPU, 512MB DDR2 RAM and 16GB of internal memory. It also has a microSD slot that supports micro SDHC cards up to 32 GB or micro SDXC cards up to 64 GB, a mini-USB port and a mini-HDMI 1.3 out, which is a nice surprise. The controls are mostly what you’d expect – a d-pad, an analog nub, 4 face buttons, 2 shoulder buttons, select and start buttons – except the GCW-Zero also has an accelerometer, so it supports tilt controls.

Here’s a video of a few games running on the handheld, courtesy of GCW-Zero lead tester Kirk Shepherd:

You can check out more videos of the handheld on Shepherd’s YouTube channel. But if you think this is the portable videogame museum for you, pledge at least $135 (USD) on its Kickstarter fundraiser to reserve a unit. Can you imagine just how much money Nintendo, Sony, Sega and the other old guards would make if they put their heads (and licenses) together and released an all-conquering retro handheld?

[via Gear Diary]

Though it’s not the posthumous complete reprieve from the crimes he’d been accused of that his followers, friends, and family had wished for, Aaron Swartz’s court case has been dismissed due to his death. The man known as Aaron Swartz was found to have ended his own life just this past week, his legacy of pushing for freedom of information appearing very much to be living on in his wake. The announcement this week from the US District Court stops the case that accused Swartz of involvement in the theft of digital documents from JSTOR, a journal archive, a case where he faced decades in prison time if found guilty.

It is US Attorney for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz who called for the end to this case due to the untimely death of its defendant. The official filing reads as follows and makes the situation extremely clear, if not abundantly oversimplified:

“Pursuant to FRCP 48(a), the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz, hereby dismisses the case presently pending against Defendant Aaron Swartz. In support of this dismissal, the government states that Mr. Swartz died on January 11, 2013.” – Document 105, Case 1:11-cr-10260-NMG, filed 1/14/2013

Aaron Swartz was a co-writer of the original specifications for RSS (Rich Site Summary aka Really Simple Syndication) back when he was 14 and creator of one of the original pieces of Reddit, that being his own “Infogami.” BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow, a friend of Swartz’s, lets us know in a tribute that in Swartz “singlehandedly liberated 20% of U.S. law” by spending “a small fortune” on pay access to a government-run site called PACER where he moved court records from that site to a public site – legal, but costly.

Swartz founded Demand Progress, fought the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) (both of which he was instrumental in helping bring down), and became entangled in a case which would ultimately (or so it seems) lead to him taking his own life. This case (that was just dismissed) suggested that Swartz used MIT’s computer networks to download 4 million (or more) articles from the digital library of academic journals known as JSTOR back in 2010 and 2011. The initial claims can still be found at the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.

“The indictment alleges that between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to break into a restricted computer wiring closet in a basement at MIT and to access MIT’s network without authorization from a computer switch within that closet. He is charged with doing this in order to download a major portion of JSTOR’s archive of digitized academic journal articles onto his computers and hard drives. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization that has invested heavily in providing an online system for archiving, accessing, and searching digitized copies of over 1,000 academic journals. It is alleged that Swartz avoided MIT’s and JSTOR’s security efforts in order to distribute a significant proportion of JSTOR’s archive through one or more file-sharing sites.” – US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts

Though JSTOR declined to prosecute and “urged the government to drop the case” according to CNN, Swartz was going to be tried for “wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer.”

Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist and a senior policy analyst at the ACLU, summed up the situation as follows:

“These are the kinds of things you’d assume the government would use in a serious hacking case — identity theft, millions of credit card numbers stolen, hacking into protected government databases or corporate networks. Aaron was accused of downloading too many articles from a website that anyone connected to the MIT network could log into.” – Soghoian

Now that Swartz is no longer on trial, those that teamed up with him while he was alive will continue to push for a more open system for the distribution of information across the web in as free a manner as possible. Though Swartz’s death was tragic, his public persona’s goals will be sought with his life and acts as a catalyst for change through the future – this isn’t the last you’ll hear his name.

[via Wired]

Aaron Swartz case dismissed posthumously by US District Court is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We already knew OUYA‘s Dev Console was shipping slightly ahead of schedule, but the open-source gaming team has now revealed exactly what comes in the box: a special edition frosted translucent version of the console. The limited availability version is headed off to 1,200 developers with a new casing – along with a few hardware tweaks – while OUYA has also thrown open the doors to its Dev Portal with the full development kit (aka ODK) and full support forums.

The OUYA Development Kit is also being released under a free license – Apache 2.0, in fact, just like Android itself – meaning as long as coders steer clear of OUYA’s own trademarks, they’re free to modify the console software at will. However, with an eye on the fragmentation that has become a headache for Android-based phones and tablets, the OUYA team say there’ll still be some control retained, to make sure it’s a safe, welcoming, and productive place for developers and gamers alike:

“It’s worth mentioning that “open” does not mean “anarchy” — and as we continue to build out OUYA’s core services, please know that not every facet of OUYA will be totally open. In order to ensure the best possible experience for our gamers and developers, for example, we will be screening games for copyrighted content and offensive material (which we’ll define under our developer guidelines), and we’ll make sure that OUYA is a secure place to discover great games and conduct business” OUYA

The first developer boxes should be reaching lucky recipients in the next couple of days, though the ODK is available to anybody who wants to sign up. In addition to the frosted casing, it has a microUSB port for connecting to a computer and debugging more straightforward. There’s also a fan, as you can see in the company’s new video:

OUYA Dev Console overview video:

The full package contents include:

• Jet-black OUYA Devs package
• Official Developer Welcome Letter
• One frosted translucent OUYA Dev Console
• Two frosted translucent OUYA Dev Controllers
• HDMI cable
• Micro-USB cable
• Power adapter

Meanwhile, there’s also a sneak peak at the UI which will face gamers; it’s still a work-in-progress, OUYA says, as is the version loaded onto the Dev Consoles, but the final thing should look something like this:

Regular Kickstarter supporters and those who have pre-ordered the console since its funding round finished will have to wait until 2013 to get their unit. Shipping is expected to begin in March.

OUYA details special translucent Dev Consoles as SDK thrown open is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Dell’s Ubuntu-powered XPS 13, codenamed Project Sputnik, started life as an internal R&D project. Now it’s grown up and is available to buy online—but why does it cost more than a Windows equivalent? More »