pi

A worldwide zombie invasion is the perfect hypothetical setting for survivalist tips, and Jeff and I can't help but explore a few of them after watching this week's episode of "The Walking Dead."

After we get that out our system, the rest of today's rundown consists of AOL laying off the majority of its AIM unit, waving goodbye to the printed Encyclopedia Britannica, and a city in the U.K. shaming away loitering youth with pink lighting that exposes acne.… Read more

Pi Day is on its way and it's time to let that geek flag fly.

If you don't spend a lot of time in the nerd-o-sphere (pun totally intended), you may not realize that March 14 (3/14) is a beloved day to the mathematically aware.

I shouldn't have to tell CNET readers, but pi is a mathematical constant--the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. The actual ratio is fairly close to 22/7--though pi to 12 places is 3.141592653589, not 3.142857142857--and comes in handy for calculating the area of a circle and other activities that even the nerdiest of writers like myself try to avoid on a daily basis.

My colleague Gina Smith, a contributor to CNET sister site TechRepublic, has a little less shame about her love for pi. She posted a long list of her favorite pi facts acquired over the years at aNewDomain (disclosure: I am a contributing editor for that site). Here are a few of my favorites:… Read more

If you're one of the lucky thousands who snagged a $35 Raspberry Pi pocket Linux system before the first run of 10,000 sold out in just a few minutes, there's almost certainly one question on your mind--where am I going to put this thing?

The Raspberry Pi is a full system with all the needed ports that's about the size of a credit card. It's definitely cheap, but it's not exactly pretty. That's likely because its nonprofit designers are mainly focused on their mission of getting the systems into the hands of kids across the developed and developing world to get them excited about programming.

Fortunately, another emerging technology makes it easy to put some clothes on that tiny naked system.… Read more

Remember that credit card-size computer that runs Linux and goes for just $25?

After the product missed its January launch, the British Raspberry Pi Foundation, which created the ARM-powered computer, finally put it up on sale via two U.K.-based electronics component retailers yesterday. Both sites promptly buckled under the resulting Web traffic.

Even the Raspberry Pi Web site has been changed to a static site due to the heavy load. … Read more

Finally, a computer that costs less than a filet mignon is almost here. We first reported on the $25 (a "B" model with double the RAM and an Ethernet port runs $35) minicomputer way back in May of last year, and now it's less than two weeks from finishing production.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation's Liz Upton over at the Raspberry Pi site discloses that after some delays, the first production run will be finished in China on February 20 and immediately shipped to the U.K., where it should be available for purchase from the Web site by the end of the month.

Raspberry Pi's creators plan to make 10,000 in the first run, and while they will be available to the public, the foundation is a charitable organization that hopes it can help inspire children worldwide to learn programming. It's currently looking into organizing a "buy one, give one" program that will try to get more of the minicomputers into the hands of underprivileged kids. … Read more

If you've been following the development of the Raspberry Pi, you know that it's a $25 bare-bones PC that could go on sale as early as this month.

What would you do with such a tiny, low-powered machine? How about turning it into a poor man's Apple TV? That's exactly what one Raspberry Pi developer did, as shown in this video. It depicts a YouTube video streaming from an iPad to a Pi, which is connected to a TV, using a bit of AirPlay-powered hackery. Take a look:… Read more

The $25 computer project known as Raspberry Pi is set to go on sale next month.

The tiny computer, which runs Linux on an ARM processor and sports USB, audio and video out, as well as an SD card slot, was designed to be an ultra-low-cost computer aimed at children.

In a blog post picked up by Business Insider this week, its creators noted that the machine will be available in January following some additional testing on the hardware and software.

At launch the diminutive machine will be offered in two configurations, one at $25 and the other at $35. … Read more

TOKYO--Who knew that "1989" was near the 10-trillionth digit in the value of pi? No one until now.

Two years ago, I speculated that a computer in Kyoto or Osaka would calculate the value of pi to 10 trillion digits.

I was wrong. The computer that apparently just clinched that record is in Nagano, Japan. And unlike the T2K-Tsukuba System that charted the irrational number in 2009 to 2.5 trillion digits, the latest number-crunching champ isn't a supercomputer--it's a hacked-together PC.

Shigeru Kondo of Iida, Nagano Prefecture, worked with software designed by Northwestern University grad … Read more

Pulling my dot-matrix Mighty Wallet out of my pocket, I might look like I'm living life with dollar bills stuck into an old piece of '80s printer paper. I like that. I just hope no one throws it out.

Searching for a backup wallet to replace one from a vacation I just took, I wandered down to Urban Outfitters and found this enticingly ridiculous, and ugly, dot-matrix wallet. It's a design only a geek could love. The green-and-white paper complete with tractor holes looks picture-perfect, only this wallet's not made of standard paper. Mighty Wallets are made of Tyvek, that same tear- and water-resistant material that's used in mailing envelopes and water-park wristbands. They've been around since 2005, but this is the first time I'd ever seen one.… Read more