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http://www.iflscience.com/brain/our-obsession-with-smartphones-reduces-our-brain-power-says-study/ The brain has a finite pool of attention resources – the “limited-capacity” cognitive resources. It seems that lots of smartphone use diminishes a person’s working memory capacity and “fluid intelligence” – the ability to solve novel problems independent of already stored information, which is called “crystallized intelligence”. →

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/benchtalk/4458549/Happy-150th-Canada–The-Technologies?utm_content=bufferf5ea8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer Here’s a short list of technologies, not all electronic, that hail from the Great White North. Look also at some of Canada’s more famous engineers.  →

http://www.iflscience.com/space/worlds-brightest-laser-is-literally-changing-how-we-see-things/ This is interesting news: Researchers have used the brightest light source in the world and it’s changing the way we see things. “When we have this unimaginably bright light, it turns out that the scattering – this fundamental thing that makes everything visible – fundamentally changes in nature,” senior author Donald Umstadter, the Leland →

http://makezine.com/2017/06/27/state-boards-platforms-products-purposes-current-crop-microcontrollers-vies-attention/ Over the last few years, we’ve seen a huge growth in the number and variety of both microcontroller boards and single-board computers.  The modern era, defined by microcontrollers becoming conveniently packaged on boards, began with the Arduino. The “classic” Arduino layout, including the irritating, irregular offset between pins 7 and 8, has become a standard. Similarly, →

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/scratch-2-raspberry-pi/ Scratch 2.0 is now available as an offline app for the Raspberry Pi! This new version of Scratch allows you to control the Pi’s GPIO (General Purpose Input and Output) pins, and offers a host of other exciting new features. As with Scratch 1.4, Scratch 2.0 on the Raspberry Pi allows you to create code to →

http://hackaday.com/2017/06/20/practical-iot-cryptography-on-the-espressif-esp8266/ This article will focus on applying AES encryption and hash authorization functions to the MQTT protocol using the popular ESP8266 chip running NodeMCU firmware.   →

https://opensource.com/article/17/2/hidden-costs-free-software?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY We’re used to hearing of software being described as “free as in freedom” and “free as in beer.” But there’s another kind of “free” that doesn’t get talked about as much: “free as in puppy.” This concept is based around the idea that when someone gives you a free puppy, that puppy isn’t really free. There’s →

http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/how-i-built-an-ai-to-sort-2-tons-of-lego-pieces This is an interesting story that combines AI and LEGO. Even second-hand Lego isn’t cheap. Bulk unsorted Lego sells for roughly €10 per kilogram (about US $11/kg), boxed sets go for €40/kg, and collections of rare parts and Lego Technic pieces much more. Consequently, there exists a cottage industry of people who buy new sets and →

http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-owns-supercomputing/ In the latest Top500 supercomputer race, only two — count ‘em, two — of the world’s fastest computers aren’t running Linux. →

https://www.flightradar24.com/ This is a cool service when you want to know what is happening when flights are late. Flightradar24 is the best live flight tracker that shows air traffic in real time.  Flightradar24 is a global flight tracking service that provides you with real-time information about thousands of aircraft around the world. The service is currently →