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The latest 802.11ac standard is the latest and arguably the most anticipated Wi-Fi standard, thanks to its much faster speeds. Since it was first showcased more than a year ago, there's been an influx of new routers that support the new Wi-Fi standard.

There's a different side to this development, however: we can't enjoy the new 802.11ac standard the way we do 802.11n just yet. That's because as Wi-Fi standards go, in order to have 802.11ac Wi-Fi connections, in addition to a supported router, you'll also need hardware clients, such as laptops, tablets, or smartphones, that support this standard, and currently there are very few clients that have built-in 802.11ac support. However, Windows computer owners can quickly add 802.11ac to their systems via a USB adapter, such as the TEW-805UB from Trendnet. Mac users can rest assured that 802.11ac will soon be supported.… Read more

I'll be the first to say I scoffed when I saw an R-Spec badge on the Genesis 5.0 sedan. Needless line extension, I thought. But, in fact, it's not such a stretch (even if the idea that this is a BMW 550i killer is.) … Read more

An offhand Twitter comment about a "Giger counter" launched a maker into a project to build a Geiger counter done in the style of "Alien" creator H.R. Giger. It's a pun come to creepy, wonderful life.

Steve D of Mad Art Lab combined a half-scale human skeleton model, a Geiger counter kit from Adafruit, some flexible tubing, and plenty of Carbon Mist metallic paint into a disturbing-looking Geiger counter.

The Geiger counter part of the creation does actually work. It makes all the right blipping sounds and a red LED lights up on the back of the alien creation's "head."… Read more

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about AV receiver feature glut. Today's receiver manufacturers put an inordinate amount of time and money into designing feature-laden receivers, and feature glut might be part of the reason why today's receivers don't sound as good as receivers did in the 1980s. I get it, today's consumers rarely compare one receiver's sound with another receiver, but they can count HDMI connections, so that's where the money goes.

It's not that Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony, and Yamaha aren't trying to make great-sounding receivers, … Read more

I'd call this week the calm before the brewing Motorola/iPhone/rumored smaller iPad/Kindle update/Surface storm, but in truth, fall gadget winds are already whipping up. This week's Microsoft Release to Manufacturing of Windows 8 signals the company's final few weeks before a hurricane of Windows 8 machines blow into the market.

Storm metaphor too heavy-handed? I'll just cut to the chase: Seth Rosenblatt took a very close look at this final version of Windows (it's the code that ships to partners installing the OS on new computers) and made a call: It'… Read more

Capt. Francis Gary Powers, the Air Force pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was posthumously honored Friday in a medal ceremony at the Pentagon.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz presented the Silver Star Medal to Capt. Powers' children, Gary Powers Jr. and Dee Powers, in the Hall of Heroes, in tribute to Powers' "heroic action and his loyalty to the United States of America during a pivotal time in our nation's history."

"My sister, myself, my wife, my son, aunts and uncles, cousins, the … Read more

You may have seen those crazy cousins of the Jet Ski and jetpack that let you zip around your favorite water-sports venue while essentially attached to a wild fire hose.

We've written about the JetLev R200 -- a jetpack-like design -- as well as a later spin on the idea: the Flyboard, which with its foot- and hand-level water jets, might make for more of a skiing-like experience.

Well, now it looks like the concept has been applied to a form factor all of us can more or less relate to: the cycle. The Jetovator lets you ride the wild hose as if it were a bike or motorcycle. And for that reason, it looks a little less squirrelly than the other devices (though watching the embedded video does make us wonder about the fine print in our health insurance policies).… Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif.--This is a big-data week in Silicon Valley, kicking off last night with a Churchill Club event here called "The Elephant in the Enterprise: What Role will Hadoop Play?" and featuring a high-powered group of big-data executives.

Hadoop, the open-source software that has emerged as the de facto standard for big data processing, may be what tips enterprise in the favor of open source. The desire to get more data and find value in it has become a business priority, and Hadoop is playing a major role in making sense of data.

And while the … Read more

VMware today announced a new open-source project called Serengeti, which enables enterprises to quickly deploy, manage, and scale Apache Hadoop in virtual and cloud environments.

VMware says it is working with the Apache Hadoop community to contribute extensions that will make Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and Hadoop MapReduce projects "virtualization-aware" to support elastic scaling and further improve Hadoop performance in virtual environments.

In case you've been living outside the big data vacuum, open source Hadoop has emerged as the de facto standard for big data processing and is packaged up in a few different distributions by … Read more