Disney finally nails free-roaming wireless power delivery Disney Research has achieved room-scale ubiquitous wireless power delivery. That is, Disney has created a prototype living room where 10 objects---a smartphone, a lamp, a fan, an RC car, and more---are powered wirelessly, no cables required. Unlike existing wireless power transfer solutions, which mostly require an object to be placed very close to a wireless charging pad, the objects in Disney's living room can receive power while freely roaming; you can walk into the room with a smartphone in your pocket and it will start charging. Ars Technica

Announcing the first SHA1 collision Cryptographic hash functions like SHA-1 are a cryptographer's swiss army knife. You'll find that hashes play a role in browser security, managing code repositories, or even just detecting duplicate files in storage. Hash functions compress large amounts of data into a small message digest. As a cryptographic requirement for wide-spread use, finding two messages that lead to the same digest should be computationally infeasible. Over time however, this requirement can fail due to attacks on the mathematical underpinnings of hash functions or to increases in computational power. Google (Linus Torvalds' response)

Broken dragons: In praise of Morrowind, a game about game design The appeal of Morrowind for a first-time player today is surely that of getting lost. The game's once-breathtaking Gamebryo engine may creak with age, and its brittle, RNG-heavy combat may seem relentlessly archaic, but Morrowind's relative shortage of navigational aids now feels positively radical. Most currently prospering open world RPGs are littered with waypoints and breadcrumb trails, their treasures and secrets tagged for consumption once you've accosted the relevant NPC. Eurogamer

Gorgeous aerial footage makes me want to spend all my money on a jetpack Like flying cars, jetpacks are the kind of technology that seems perpetually on the cusp of going mainstream. Though they're both still incredibly expensive and incredibly dangerous, it's easy to ignore those glaring issues when footage like this makes jetpacks look like the best toy one could ever own. This gorgeous footage was captured by Tyson Henderson and Carter Hogan using a small army of cameras including the RED Weapon, a GoPro Hero 4, and three camera-carrying drones for all of the aerial shots.

Founder of India's $4 smartphone firm arrested on allegations of fraud The founder of an Indian tech firm that shot to prominence by offering a $4 smartphone has been arrested on allegations of fraud, after a handset dealer accused the company of not refunding him for an unfulfilled order, the police said. Mohit Goel, the founder of Ringing Bells, was arrested Thursday afternoon in Uttar Pradesh and will be produced in court later on Friday, said Rahul Srivastav, a police spokesman from the northern Indian state. Reuters

The alternative facts of cable companies Cable companies have bad reputations for customer service, and sometimes they rename themselves to divert attention and get a fresh start. Comcast's "Xfinity" rebranding in 2010 has now been followed by Charter's renaming of itself---after a megamerger with Time Warner Cable last year---as "Spectrum." But changing your name doesn't mean that you aren't liable for misbehavior under your previous moniker. Backchannel

High performance communication by people with paralysis using an intracortical brain-computer interface Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to restore communication for people with tetraplegia and anarthria by translating neural activity into control signals for assistive communication devices. While previous pre-clinical and clinical studies have demonstrated promising proofs-of-concept... eLife Sciences

Intel supercharges Atom chips with 16 cores and pro-level features Intel's Atom was mostly known as a low-end chip for mobile devices that underperformed. That may not be the case anymore. The latest Atom C3000 chips announced on Tuesday have up to 16 cores and are more sophisticated than ever. The chips are made for storage arrays, networking equipment, and internet of things devices. PC World

Is owning a 3D printer worth it? 3D printers are the single best example of what Open Hardware can be. They're useful for prototyping, building jigs for other tools, and Lulzbot has proven desktop 3D printers can be used in industrial production. We endorse 3D printing as a viable tool as a matter of course around here, but that doesn't mean we think every house should have a 3D printer. Hackaday

A Super Smash Bros-playing AI has taught itself how to stomp professional players In a crowded convention center in San Jose, Calif., this past January during the Genesis 4 Super Smash Bros. tournament, away from the main competitive stage, a small group of gamers gathered around a clunky, four-year-old HP laptop. Amidst the onlookers, a professional player called Gravy was battling on familiar ground against an unfamiliar opponent. Quartz

Toshiba now shipping samples of 64-Layer, 512Gb 3D flash memory Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.(TAEC)* today announced that it has added a 512 gigabit (Gb)1 (64 gigabyte), 64-layer device with 3-bit-per-cell triple-level cell (TLC) technology to its industry-leading BiCS FLASH™ product line. This technology will enable a 1-terabyte (TB) chip solution. Toshiba

How a college kid made his Honda Civic self-driving for $700 Brevan Jorgenson's grandma kept her cool when he took her for a nighttime spin in the Honda Civic he's modified to drive itself on the highway. A homemade device in place of the rear-view mirror can control the brakes, accelerator, and steering, and it uses a camera to identify road markings and other cars. MIT

Treasure trove of internal Apple memos discovered in thrift store Peeking inside a book bin at a Seattle Goodwill, Redditor vadermeer caught an interesting, unexpected glimpse into the early days of Apple: a cache of internal memos, progress reports, and legal pad scribbles from 1979 and 1980, just three years into the tech monolith's company history. Gizmodo

The fastest memory cards money can buy Nobody has ever complained about a memory card being too fast, and increasingly, electronics manufacturers are expecting you to have high-speed memory cards that are compatible with certain features... B&H