Microsoft confirms Windows 8.1 is a free upgrade

Microsoft’s Tami Reller spoke at a JP Mogan technology conference this afternoon. The big news of the day: Windows 8.1 will be a free upgrade when it’s released later this year.

There have been plenty of rumors about Windows 8.1 pricing leading up to today. Some said free, others expected an inexpensive Apple-style price tag. Thankfully, Reller has cleared the air and we can focus on things like features and a release date instead of wondering if we’ll need to start saving our couch cushion change.

No specific launch date was given, but Reller told the crowd that Microsoft “knows when the holidays are.” With a developer preview of Windows 8.1 expected at Build next month, it seems reasonable that the 8.1 update would land just ahead of the shopping rush — possibly some time in October. And no, she didn’t get into specific details like whether or not the Start Button really is coming back or if you’ll be able to bypass the Start Screen. She did, however, offer another hint that Windows 8.1 will be showing up on iPad Mini-sized devices.

Reller noted that Windows 8 is a perfect fit on PCs of all sizes, from desktops and all-in-ones right down to “the smallest tablets.” She didn’t exactly let the cat out of the bag with that quote, obviously. Microsoft all but confirmed as much back when it changed the Windows 8 device certification guidelines. Later, a premature product placement from one of Microsoft’s biggest Windows partners seemed to have spilled the beans. Amazon briefly listed the Iconia W3on its digital shelves. The unannounced Atom-powered tablet was shown as running Windows 8 and having a 7-inch 1280 x 800 display. The page has since been pulled down, but that leak, coupled with Ms. Reller’s comments today, should be all the confirmation we need.

Since you’re not going to have to spend any cash on the Windows  8.1 upgrade, maybe you can justify dropping $300 on a small Windows tablet this fall instead.

Raspberry Pi camera boards are now available for the price of a Raspberry Pi

While you’re sitting around, patiently awaiting the inevitable Raspberry Pi spec upgrade, not knowing what else to do with the little guy, the Pi Foundation has benevolently released the official camera attachment. Now, while your Model B is still sitting pretty at 512MB of RAM with a 700MHz CPU, you can at least take up photography to pass the time.

The camera board slips into that thin connector located between the HDMI and Ethernet ports. The installation process is actually a bit delicate, so the Foundation made a handy video to ensure sure we all don’t break our new toy.

The installation process does seem a little tedious, as you’re plugging a flimsy ribbon into a thin slot, need to flip down a clamp while keeping the ribbon steady, and also need to keep the extremely lightweight Pi in place while you perform it all.

For the price of $25 — the price of a Model A Raspberry Pi — the 5MP camera isn’t a slouch, capable of recording 1080p video.

In order to make your tiny, adorable computer recognize the new camera attachment, you need to update the firmware, then boot into the configuration settings and enable the camera. Save the settings, then reboot. The Foundation has a list of commands with which the camera can be used, including recording video and snapping still photography. The camera is also able to stream its feed over the internet, using another set of commands.

If the RasPi is a fun little board for you to casually mess around with, and experimenting with the new camera is either a little too time-consuming or complex for your capabilities or attention span, don’t you worry. The RasPi community is quick to move, and you’ll have a bunch of tutorials and plug-and-play project ideas sooner rather than later.

Joe Biden floats idea of a tax on violent video games and other media

In a meeting about gun control with national religious leaders like Rev. Billy Graham, Joe Biden uttered the words that would flood the gaming subreddits and seep through to the rest of social media. According to an attendee of the meeting, Biden “floated the idea that media and entertainment that portray violence should be subject to a special tax, with the proceeds going to help victims and their families.” He also said that there was “no restriction on the ability to do that, there’s no legal reason why they couldn’t.”

This is the ACLU’s fault (of course), since their bulldog attitude toward these sorts of initiatives make it totally safe for politicians to bluff about taking them up. Does Joe Biden have a plan in place, a congressional vote chart drawn out on a whiteboard in his office? Of course not; this is utterly meaningless wind, since everybody in that room is well aware that no such tax will ever be introduced. It’s been tried before, and the opposition to it is so strong that you can now even float the idea of a content-based artist tax and it’s such a non-starter idea that it usually has no fallout at all. It’s an issue that’s only useful in plastic-faced meetings like this one.

The Obama administration has already made it clear, however, that violent media are a source of worry in a more general sense. They’ve funded research into the effects of exposure to violent games in thewake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, at least hypothesizing the same link made explicit by Biden’s gamer-reparation plan. This might be more reasonable if that precise issue hadn’t been studied many times already. Hillary Clinton was banging the same drum for many years until she got enough power to concern herself with more important things, even going so far as to maintain a brief association with Jack Thompson.

These are issues picked up and given a cursory run through the docket. A few speaking appearances, fundraising dinners, a likely bogus study or two, and problems can go away. They ignore the legal, constitutional, and popular opposition that has demolished many similar ideas in the past because there is no actual thought of bringing them to fruition, these days. It’s just wind, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any less repulsive to hear said aloud.

Google CEO Larry Page suffering from vocal cord paralysis

If you’ve ever listened to Google CEO Larry Page speak, you can’t help but notice his voice sounds a little unusual. There is a very good reason for that, and it’s one Page has decided to come out and explain due to a recent illness that has made it worse.

Larry Page is suffering from vocal cord paralysis. It first started when he was just 14 years old and suffered from a bad cold. Everyone’s voice can sound different when they are ill, but once fully recovered Page’s voice didn’t recover as expected and remained what he describes as “weaker.” Tests carried out by a doctor confirmed he had left vocal cord paralysis. That means the cord still moves, but not as you’d expect.

It was unclear at the time if there was some relationship between the bad cold and the paralysis occurring. It could have just been coincidence and there was no confirmation of the cause from Page’s doctors.

This all happened 25 years ago, but last year Page’s voice got worse again, and for exactly the same reason. He got a bad cold again, his voice was affected, and it never recovered. But this time it was his right vocal cord that had been paralyzed. This has resulted in his voice becoming much softer, and accounts for why we haven’t seen him doing much work in front of a camera or involving lots of talking lately.

It turns out vocal cord paralysis or paresis is very rare and there isn’t much in the way of information or treatments to improve the condition. So Larry Page has decided to take action and is funding a research program headed up by Dr. Steven Zeitels from the Harvard Medical School. It is hoped this research will not only increase our understanding of paresis, but also lead to new treatments for those who suffer with it.

Printed robot worm capable of folding itself together

While the world of robotics hasn’t exactly caught up to where entertainment media thought it could be by now, it’s still rolling along at an impressive pace. However, rather than creating autonomous Terminators and C-3PO, the industry tends to move in a more specialized direction. Case in point, this new palm-sized robotic inchworm created by a team at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. It can’t reassemble itself if you blow it up or melt it, but this printed little guy can fold itself together.

Since the robot is printed, it begins life as something of a flat sheet. Anyone that has attended elementary school and made one of those paper balloons or baskets knows what comes next. Thanks to acombination of hinges and shape memory polymers, the robot is able to fold itself together, and survive the process.

Unfortunately, the robot can’t assemble whenever it wants, and requires the hinges to be heated in order to fold itself. From there, the robot is still just a casing, but the team can easily add a battery and motor. A pick-and-place robot is meant to position the heaters, battery, and motor into the bare body, but at the moment, the team does it manually.

Perhaps the best nugget to take away from the Harvard team’s design is that the material that causes the robots to contract when heated is the magical Shrinky Dink. Instead of a colored-pencil figurine of Mickey Mouse, though, the Shrinky sheet creates the body of a crawling robotic inchworm.

Officially, the team’s next goal is to build a more complicated robot that can assemble itself without any outside help, then can walk away when built.

Printed robot worm capable of folding itself together

While the world of robotics hasn’t exactly caught up to where entertainment media thought it could be by now, it’s still rolling along at an impressive pace. However, rather than creating autonomous Terminators and C-3PO, the industry tends to move in a more specialized direction. Case in point, this new palm-sized robotic inchworm created by a team at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. It can’t reassemble itself if you blow it up or melt it, but this printed little guy can fold itself together.

Since the robot is printed, it begins life as something of a flat sheet. Anyone that has attended elementary school and made one of those paper balloons or baskets knows what comes next. Thanks to acombination of hinges and shape memory polymers, the robot is able to fold itself together, and survive the process.

Unfortunately, the robot can’t assemble whenever it wants, and requires the hinges to be heated in order to fold itself. From there, the robot is still just a casing, but the team can easily add a battery and motor. A pick-and-place robot is meant to position the heaters, battery, and motor into the bare body, but at the moment, the team does it manually.

Perhaps the best nugget to take away from the Harvard team’s design is that the material that causes the robots to contract when heated is the magical Shrinky Dink. Instead of a colored-pencil figurine of Mickey Mouse, though, the Shrinky sheet creates the body of a crawling robotic inchworm.

Officially, the team’s next goal is to build a more complicated robot that can assemble itself without any outside help, then can walk away when built.

Haswell’s low power states made possible by on-die voltage regulator

Intel is expected to launch Haswell processors next month that bring with them a number of improvements over the Ivy bridge chips they replace. As well as much improved integrated GPUs and an expected 10% gain in CPU performance, Haswell chips come with some major power savings.

So great are these power savings in certain power states (notably C6 and C7 states) your PSU may not be able to cope, meaning a power supply upgrade. But how has Intel managed to make such gains in lowering power use? The answer seems to be the integration of a voltage regulator module on-die.

This is the first time that Intel has managed to fully integrate the voltage regulator on to a processor. As well as being 50x smaller than the motherboard bound regulators that have come before, it also allows the chip to enter power saving states much more quickly as well as control CPU, GPU, the memory controller and I/O voltages more efficiently. The end result is significantly lower power draw and the ability to move into power saving states not previously possible.

Intel has been planning to fully integrate the voltage regulator for several years now, but has only now got it to work for Haswell. It doesn’t come without a negative, though. As the voltage regulator is now on-die, your CPU cooling setup has to cope with the additional heat it will produce. That could potentially limit the overclocking headroom of Haswell chips depending on just how hot the regulator gets.

If overclocking isn’t a major concern, which for the majority of people it isn’t, Haswell should be viewed as the CPU to have in your next laptop. The power savings on offer means your battery is going to last that much longer without compromising on performance.