[H]ardNews - Blair's Tech Ed.

Killer Eyesight:

Pretty cool stuff here, you can just look at your target and blow it up. Next up…mind bullets (that’s telekinesis)! I can’t believe I just worked Tenacious D lyrics into a news post.

JHMCS are said to combine a magnetic head tracker with a display projected onto the pilot's visor, giving the pilot a targeting device that can be used to aim sensors and weapons wherever the pilot is looking. With JHMCS, the pilot can aim the radar, air-to-air missiles, infrared sensors, and air-to-ground weapons by pointing his or her head at the target and pressing a switch on the flight controls.

Gaming Phones:

To hell with getting a gaming laptop, pretty soon our phones will have good 3D capabilities. Next you’ll be getting a Half Life 2 coupon with your phone.

The latest addition to Toshiba's T series of MPEG-4 LSI, the T4G (part number: TC35285XBG) supports fast rendering of graphics, including advanced shading, texture mapping, special effects and other visualization functions, enabling mobile phones to offer high-resolution 3D graphics matching those of current game consoles.

False Alarm Asteroid:

Call the President, call the President…killer asteroid on the way to earth!!! Ummm, nevermind, false alarm. Doh!

Astronomers have revealed how they came within minutes of alerting the world to a potential asteroid strike last month. Some scientists believed the object had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours. It could have caused local devastation and the researchers contemplated a call to President Bush before new data finally showed there was no danger.

New Test Chip:

Applied Materials are proud of their first 65-nm test chip. We heard they were handing out “It’s a Chip!” cigars.

Applied Materials Inc., working with Cadence Design Systems, Inc., has made a 65-nm test chip using diagonal as well as traditional right-angle Manhattan interconnects. The X Initiative consortium said Wednesday that Applied created the first 65-nm X-architecture chip at the company's technology center in Sunnyvale, Calif. Applied fabricated an X-architecture 90-nm test chip last summer.