Share Your Internet Connection Using an Outdoor Wireless Access Point [Dark Side]

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5911812/share-your-internet-connection-using-an-outdoor-wireless-access-point

Have you ever shared your internet connection with another person? Many users are protesting arbitrary price hikes from ISPs by sharing Wi-Fi connections. Typically this only works well if you're within a few hundred feet, but outdoor wireless access points can extend this range up to 2,000ft if you don't have any trees blocking line-of-sight.

Early retirement weblog Mr. Money Mustache engaged in an experiment to see if he could share a high-speed internet connection with a friend 900 ft away—too far for sharing a Wi-Fi connection using his router. He purchased and installed two high-power wireless outdoor access points, installed them on each roof, and found a way to run an ethernet cable from their router to their roof. In his particular case he had to step up to a more powerful antenna but that all depends on your distance and if any trees obscure your line-of-sight connection.

You'll need to be savvy with how to manually set an IP address and be able to assign router DHCP Lan addresses on 192.168.2.x subnets, but you'll be able to share an internet connection with a friend saving up to $300 per year and means that you'll never have any problems getting a Wi-Fi signal in your immediate neighborhood. You can also use this technique with one antenna to fine-tune a nearby public Wi-Fi network that you can't otherwise pick up at your home, such as a citywide pay-for-use Wi-Fi network.

Finally, most for-profit ISPs have restrictions against sharing internet connections. Make sure you have carefully reviewed your service restrictions to see if this is allowed before attempting this setup. If you disregard the restrictions you can face fines or worse. For that reason we're tagging this a dark side post and reminding you that it is for educational purposes only.

Internet Sharing—How to Get Revenge on the Cable Company | Mr. Money Mustache

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REPORT: Traders Are Flipping Out Over Facebook SNAFU, And Want $100 Million From The NASDAQ

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/report-traders-are-flipping-out-over-facebook-snafu-and-want-100-million-from-the-nasdaq-2012-5

Glitches, delays, and confusion on Facebook's first day of trading reportedly have traders livid, and they're taking their anger out on the NASDAQ.

Charlie Gasparino reports:

Angry traders and investors are bombarding Nasdaq officials with demands that the exchange make good on losses they say were incurred during the messy execution of the Facebook IPO, where Nasdaq systems essentially broke down and failed to execute buy and sell orders for the stock at various times during Friday’s stock sale, according to
people with first-hand knowledge of the matter.

These people say that the demands for money could total $100 million or possibly more, but Nasdaq chief executive officer Bob Greifeld is, at least for now, taking the position that the exchange will not cover the losses.

Our Nicholas Carlson reported on these glitches on Friday:

A theory from a source close to FB's IPO bankers: The volume that caused NASDAQ to delay the IPO for more than a half hour, also prevented Nasdaq from informing big bank trading desks whether or not their trades on Facebook had gone through.

This left trading desks in a position where "you don't know whether you bought it, and you think you did at $42 but you're not sure," says our source.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if NASDAQ does have to eat losses somehow. We're not sure what the mechanism would be. They have certainly acknowledged issues, and shares in the NASDAQ itself were down 4% on Friday.

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$74 MK802 PC-on-a-stick beats Cotton Candy to market, has ICS on board

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/18/mk802-beats-cotton-candy-to-market/

Unless you're lucky enough to live in Scandinavia, you'll have to wait till the end of summer to get your Cotton Candy fix. Aching to nab yourself a computer-on-a-stick before then? If you're willing to step down in specs, the Chinese-made MK802 could be the PC in your pocket. For $74 (versus $199 for the Cotton Candy), this 7-ounce device gives you a 1.5-GHz Allwinner A10 CPU, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and, like the Cotton Candy, Android 4.0. FXI's version, on the other hand, packs a dual-core 1.2-GHz Samsung Exynos processor, and while the MK802 offers an HDMI port, the Cotton Candy includes an HDMI connector. The MK802 is slightly bulkier than its sweetly named competitor (3.5 inches vs. 3.1), but that Android logo on the front does wonders for its design cred. AliExpress.com is currently selling the MK802 with free shipping to the US -- click the source link for a gander.

$74 MK802 PC-on-a-stick beats Cotton Candy to market, has ICS on board originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 May 2012 14:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Raspberry Pi team shows off pics of (and taken with) prototype camera add-on

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/19/raspberry-pi-camera-add-on/

While the main thing that would make Raspberry Pi's diminutive $25 / $35 Linux setups better would be if we could get our hands on them faster, the team behind it is already working on improvements like this prototype camera seen above. The add-on is slated to ship later this year and plugs into the CSI pins left exposed right in the middle of each unit. According to the accompanying blog post, the specs may be downgraded from the prototype's 14MP sensor to keep things affordable, although there's no word on an exact price yet. Possible applications include robotics and home automation, but until the hackers get their hands on them you'll have to settle for one pic from the Pi's POV after the break and a few more at the source linked below.

Continue reading Raspberry Pi team shows off pics of (and taken with) prototype camera add-on

Raspberry Pi team shows off pics of (and taken with) prototype camera add-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 May 2012 04:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers tout efficiency breakthrough with new 'inexact' chip

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/19/researchers-tout-efficiency-breakthrough-with-new-inexact-chip/

Accuracy is generally an important consideration in computer chips, but a team of researchers led by Rice University are touting a new "inexact" chip (dubbed PCMOS) that they say could lead to as much as a fifteen-fold increase in efficiency. Their latest work, which won a best paper award at a recent ACM conference, builds on years of research in the field from the university, and is already moving far beyond the lab -- some inexact hardware is being used in the "i-slate" educational tablet developed by the Rice-NTU Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics, 50,000 of which are expected to wind up in India's Mahabubnagar school district over the next three years. As for the chips themselves, their inexactness comes not just from one process, but a variety of different measures that can be used on their own or together -- including something the researchers describe as "pruning," which eliminate rarely used portions of the chip. All of that naturally comes with some trade-offs (less defined video processing is one example given), but the researchers say those are often outweighed by the benefits -- like cheaper, faster chips that require far less power.

Researchers tout efficiency breakthrough with new 'inexact' chip originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 May 2012 06:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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