As if it weren’t hard enough keeping your house safe from debt collectors these days, now you have something else to worry about: a falling German satellite called ROSAT. The German Aerospace Center has estimated that the hunk of decommissioned, extra-orbital metal will enter the atmosphere sometime between 7:30pm ET tonight and 1:30am ET tomorrow. It’s unknown whether any of the thing will survive re-entry, but the 1.7 ton telescope mirror onboard very well may, striking the surface at a hasty 17,398MPH. The agency doesn’t know where it will fall, but did reassuringly say that it won’t hit Europe — German scientists basically telling the rest of the world to spend all night worrying while they doze away, peacefully. At least it won’t be taking any of its orbital brethren with it…

Achtung: German satellite to crash down tonight, won’t land in Germany originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Major Chinese supplier halts rare earths production in attempt to boost prices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A week ago the world went wild over CERN’s tentative claim that it could make neutrinos travel faster than light. Suddenly, intergalactic tourism and day trips to the real Jurassic Park were back on the menu, despite everything Einstein said. Now, however, a team of scientists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands reckons it’s come up with a more plausible (and disappointing) explanation of what happened: the GPS satellites used to measure the departure and arrival times of the racing neutrinos were themselves subject to Einsteinian effects, because they were in motion relative to the experiment. This relative motion wasn’t properly taken into account, but it would have decreased the neutrinos’ apparent journey time. The Dutch scientists calculated the error and came up with the 64 nanoseconds. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s almost exactly the margin by which CERN’s neutrinos were supposed to have beaten light. So, it’s Monday morning, Alpha Centauri and medieval jousting tournaments remain as out of reach as ever, and we just thought we’d let you know.

Remember those faster-than-light neutrinos? Great, now forget ‘em originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you don’t own a BlackBerry yourself, chances are you know somebody who does. And if that person lives in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America or South America, they’re probably quite unhappy with RIM at the moment. This week’s service outage began with a server failure in the UK, and spread like wildfire to Africa and the Middle East, before continuing on to parts of Asia, the US, Canada and a good portion of South America. This is only the latest BlackBerry service outage for RIM, bringing email, BBM and web browsing services to a halt. But with BlackBerry services playing a critical role in real-time business and government communications, any interruption is unacceptable, and costly for all.

RIM CTO David Yach responded to questions during a press conference this afternoon, explaining the original cause of the outage (that UK server failure, along with a series of failed redundancies), and how that grew into the global outage we’re experiencing now:

“It’s a backlog issue. Clearly we have a backlog in Europe, based on the initial outage and the time it’s taken to stabilize that. At this point, we have not throttled the other regions, but as you can imagine, with the global reach of BlackBerry, people using it to contact others around the world, there’s a lot of messages coming to Europe from Asia and the Americas, and those would be backed up on the other system. It’s looking like over time that backlog built, and started impacting those other systems.”

The obvious solution would be to clear the backlog and restore service, but in doing so, RIM would purge any undelivered messages. Yach said that all emails will eventually be delivered, however, so you shouldn’t have anything to worry about there (there was no related comment regarding BBM messages). When asked what the company would be doing to “make right” by way of its customers, Yach emphasized that his focus was only on restoring service at this point, and made no promises of restitution.

Is the BlackBerry outage affecting you? Let us know by voting in our poll, or leaving a comment after the break.

Continue reading RIM clarifies global service outage, doesn’t provide ETA for restore

RIM clarifies global service outage, doesn’t provide ETA for restore originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You didn’t expect the Olympics to land in London without a video game tie-in snapping at its heels, did you? Of course not, but did you expect it to be bundled with a powder-blue console? Here’s the skinny: Nintendo’s Mario & Sonic at the 2012 Olympic Games Limited Edition Pack pairs the outfit’s upcoming Gamecube-free Wii refresh with the ghetto fabulous chromatic pop of the 1970s’ tackiest grooviest tuxedo craze. Like the “Family Edition” bundle that clued us in on the hardware refresh, this package has only been announced for Europe, and there’s still no word on how much either set will cost. Nintendo of Europe says they will be announcing additional bundles later this year, but if you just have to have a matching console for your blue Wiimote, you can pick one up November 18th.

European blue Wii bundle takes Mario & Sonic to the Olympics, sends US gamers home without a medal originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Oct 2011 03:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Desktop PC power supplies are tough to get excited about, no matter how many features they cram in. But Cooler Master’s Silent Pro Hybrid Fanless series is actually pretty alluring. The supply isn’t actually “fanless” but it does have a fanless mode that can be used to minimize machine noise, at least until the load crosses the 200W threshold. Add to that a 90-percent efficiency, fully modular cables and a control panel that lets you manually adjust the speed of your system fans and you’re looking at quite the compelling product for the DIY desktop enthusiast. As you could have guessed though, all these fancy features don’t come cheap. Cooler Master is offering three different models: 850W, 1050W and 1300W, which range in price from $200 to $300 — a sizable chunk of change to drop on any component. They’ll be shipping this month to the US and Asia, with Europe to follow in November. Check out the complete PR after the break.

Continue reading Cooler Master launches Silent Pro Hybrid Fanless Series of power supplies

Cooler Master launches Silent Pro Hybrid Fanless Series of power supplies originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Voice enters internal testing across Europe, international launch on the horizon? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 04:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aftermarket infotainment and stereo solutions for cars have largely died off here in the US. Innotrends has cooked up an Android-powered box, called Ca-Fi, that might have you wishing this little in-dash computer could find a home in your vinyl-covered panel. The 1.2GHz chip inside pushes Gingerbread to the 6.2-inch touch screen for pulling up directions, playing tunes and performing searches using the integrated 3G radio. Of course, as ExtremeTech points out, the double-DIN slot used by the Ca-Fi has been largely abandoned by car makers (particularly in America). But hey, if you’ve been looking for a way to spruce up that Nova rusting away in your garage, this could be it. We just hope you’re the patient type — Ca-Fi isn’t expected to launch until Spring of 2012 and will be a Europe only affair at first. Head on after the break for one more pic and some PR.

Continue reading Ca-Fi is an aftermarket Android car stereo that won’t fit in your dashboard

Ca-Fi is an aftermarket Android car stereo that won’t fit in your dashboard originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Need another reason to be interested in the PlayStation Vita? Sony announced during tonight’s press conference that it will tie in with the only-available-in-Japan Torne DVR adapter (PlayTV in Europe and nonexistent in NA) for the PlayStation 3. Once synced up, it allows users to remotely tune into live TV streams Slingbox-style, browse listings and remotely schedule recordings via an app on the portable device. It should be ready to go at launch, while the ability to export recorded shows to the Vita like one of Monsoon’s boxes will be added later. For now however, we can only look on in envy and hope rumors of a PlayTV 2 eventually come true, and come out here.

PlayStation Vita’s Torne app pulls in live TV streams served up from a PS3 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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