Fusion-io IoXtreme SSD: Fastest Consumer SSD on the Market [SSDs]

HotHardware took a look at this consumer-focused PCI-Express SSD from Fusion-io, and found that while it's pretty damn expensive at $900 for 80GB, it's blazingly fast, hitting 700MB/s read and 300MB/s write speeds.
Unfortunately, in addition to the expense, it can't be used as a bootable drive quite yet, although Fusion-io claims that feature is coming. And we probably shouldn't gloss over the expense—yeah, it's a "consumer drive," and it's cheap compared to similar drives, but it's still $900 for 80GB. But it's a cool look at where storage could be headed, and if you've got enough money to snag one (available at Amazon), well, I hate you lots.
[Gizmodo via HotHardware via Engadget]

A 2x Faster Web

From Google's Chromium Blog:

Today we'd like to share with the web community information about SPDY, pronounced 'SPeeDY', an early-stage research project that is part of our effort to make the web faster. SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression.

We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP. HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web's tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.

So far we have only tested SPDY in lab conditions. The initial results are very encouraging: when we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance - pages loaded up to 55% faster. There is still a lot of work we need to do to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions. However, we believe that we have reached the stage where our small team could benefit from the active participation, feedback and assistance of the web community.

For those of you who would like to learn more and hopefully contribute to our experiment, we invite you to review our early stage documentation, look at our current code and provide feedback through the Chromium Google Group.

Posted by Mike Belshe, Software Engineer and Roberto Peon, Software Engineer

This post is cross-posted at the Google Research Blog

[Chromium Blog]

Cockroach-Inspired Robot Survives 8-Story Fall, Will Outlive Us All [Robots]

DASH, a UC Berkeley-designed, cockroach-inspired robot, manages to take what makes cockroaches so resilient and even retain the cockroach's singularly creepy movement. This thing is near-indestructible.
The 10-cm long DASH, which stands for Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, weighs only 16 grams, yet is able to run 15 times its body length per second. It has a uniquely flexible design from nearly all sides that allows it to survive pretty much anything, including a drop eight stories above the ground. It's actually made of what's basically laminated cardboard, which means it's a very cheap robot to build as well. Check out the video - this thing is crazy. [Gizmodo]

Eco-Macho: Germany debuts e2 electric car of the future

The Tesla electric car is officially passé now that we have the e2 electric sports car from e-Wolf coming in 2011. The vehicle features a 544 horsepower electric engine, a battery that will last for 186 miles, and a top speed of 155 miles per hour.

What makes the e2 even more attractive is that it will take just 30 minutes to power up to a full electric charge. According to the company the car will be able to hit 60 miles per hour in just 4 seconds. The era of eco-macho is upon us, now it's all just a waiting game.

[DVICE via AutoBlog]

sgi octane iii personal supercomputer: my pc’s faster than your pc.

SGI’s new Octane III workstation takes the speed and performance that you’d usually find in a rack full of machines and puts it alongside your desk.

By leveraging modern miniaturization, the Octane III can handle up to 80 CPU cores, yes that’s EIGHT-ZERO CPU cores, along with up to 1TB, yes that’s ONE TERABYTE of RAM. If that’s not enough, the top-of-the line config has room for ten 2.5″ SATA II hard drives. And it all fits in a box that’s not much bigger than your average workstation tower (a 1-foot by 2-foot footprint).
The Octane III workstation can be purchased in a variety of insanely powerful configurations, including:

• Ten dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5500 series-based nodes.
• One dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5500 series-based workstation with advanced NVIDIA graphics and/or GP-GPU card support.
• Nineteen single-socket, Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 3400 series-based nodes.
• Nineteen single-socket, Dual-Core Intel Atom processor-based nodes.

Prices for the Octane III start at $7999 (USD) and go up from there. While that might sound like a lot for a desktop PC, this thing is in a league all by itself.
I can’t wait to play some CRYSIS on this bad boy.
[via SlipperyBrick]

Mission One Electric Bike Breaks World Speed Record [Electric Bike]

From concept to real product: The Mission One electric bike—designed and made by Yves Behar and Mission Motors—is now the world's fastest electric bike at 161mph (260km/h). And they got a video to prove it.

The bike broke the record on September 1, averaging 150.059mph, and reaching a top speed of 161mph. The most amazing thing is that this is not a prototype, but an actual production model. It's the same as the first 300 bikes that will be available in 2010. In fact, you can get one of the first 50, which are already available for custom order.
There's only one bit of bad news: Now they are saying it will only have a 150 miles range, instead of 200. Still, color me absolutely wowiezowiebbergasted. [Fast Company]

Bird Beats Broadband! Pigeon Flies 4GBs Faster than South African DSL [Broadband]

South Africa's broadband has got to be feeling pretty ill-equipped today considering a real, wing-flapping pigeon beat its transfer speeds. No really, a company found out that sending a bird with a 4GB USB drive was faster than uploading.
That has got to hurt for Telkom, one of South Africa's main ADSL providers, but damn is Winston the pigeon feeling like the man today. He is telling all the other pigeons, how it took him two hours to carry the strapped-to-his-back flash drive 60 miles to the company's second office in Durban. In the same time the broadband service had only sent 4 percent of the data. You do the math but that is pretty damn slow upload speeds. No wonder the guys at Unlimited IT first joked that a bird could send files faster.
This is just the kind of story I want to read to children at night (I'm thinking the picture book is called 'Winston and the Broadband'). Let's hope South Africa gets those fiber optic lines installed soon or else a crap load of bird seed. [BBC]

Five Shocking Time-Lapse Videos of the Los Angeles Wildfire [Clips]

Five Shocking Time-Lapse Videos of the Los Angeles Wildfire [Clips]: "
After 11 days, Firefighters believe they have finally made progress battling the arson fire that has ravaged 148,258 acres of Angeles National Forest. That is a herculean feat, as these frighting time-lapse videos illustrate.




In a town so tied into the film industry, it isn't surprising that local filmmakers would turn their cameras on the fire—showing us all just how fast a small flame can rage into something so utterly devastating. Check out Fast Company for the rest of the videos. [Fast Company and Yahoo]

Speed Limit Sign Displays Days In Hospital Based On Your Car Speed [Displays]

These 25mph speed limit signs are equipped with a speed radar and a number display. Nothing strange about that, really. Until you notice that the billboard displays horrible figures—like days in hospital or crash bills—based on your speed.

I don't know how it calculates the numbers. Maybe it's just a speed display, maybe it uses some logic to come up with the accident bills costs or the chance of a crash. I do know, however, that people respond to fear more than to fines. 46 days in the hospital won't be fun at all, so grab your steering wheel with both hands, and please drive safely. [Direct Daily]