I know, I know. We all want to enjoy a gorgeous OLED TV or eat 4K visual deliciousness in our living room but those sets are ridiculously expensive and going to be pretty unrealistic for a long while. The best TV at the moment is the Panasonic VT50, a plasma screen, but we all know people’s eyeballs have their own preferences. More »
Intrepid 6-wheeler Curiosity perhaps protested too much when it tweeted “Yes, I’ve got a laser beam attached to my head. I’m not ill tempered; I zapped a rock for science.” NASA turned the rover‘s high-powered laser loose with 30 pulses of a million watts each, reducing a thin layer of the chosen stone, dubbed N165 “Coronation,” to plasma. The resulting spectrum was then analyzed by the on-board “ChemCam” to determine its composition, and the US/French team who developed the system said it’s working even better on Mars than it did on terra firma. The results are now being studied, but if we had a laser beam on another planet, we’d be firing it all over the place — in the name of “science,” of course.
Filed under: Science
Curiosity rover warms up its laser with basaltic rock blast originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Panasonic’s financial year runs from summer to summer, so its first-quarter results for 2013 just hit the wire. The figures proudly show that the company has managed to turn around the losses it suffered so badly in the previous period — with $23 billion in turnover generating a tidy profit of $164 million. While sales dropped by six percent compared to the first three months of the year, it’s been reducing fixed costs and restructuring each segment of the business to ensure a return to profit making despite the worsening financial crisis in Europe. The company’s even been able to stick some cash into the savings account, tucking $16.6 million into the piggy bank for a rainy day.
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Panasonic’s 2013 Q1: things are looking up with a $164 million profit originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 03:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Panasonic and Samsung make some sweet plasma TVs. The newest LG, the 9700, is definitely an improvement over the company’s plasmas to date. But can it maintain the pace set by its competitors? More »
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