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The First Totally Open Source Laptop Is Almost Real

Novena open source laptop

I wrote about Novena, an DIY open source laptop project for Wired:

“The motherboard, battery board, and display adapter board are designs from whole cloth,” Huang says of the machine. “Every trace on those PCBs was placed by my hand.” They also designed the case, which includes several components that you can print from a 3-D printer. And instead of proprietary firmware, they used the open source Das U-Boot.

It’s not the fastest or the most portable of laptops. Equipped with 4GB of RAM and an ARM processor you’re more likely to find in a cell phone, it offers the power of the average netbook, but it’s the size and weight of a budget laptop from the middle aughts. “It’s no feather,” Huang says.

But what the Novena lacks in modernity it makes up for in transparency. “If you see something suspicious in the hardware, you have the opportunity to look it up in the reference schematics and see if it really is a cause for concern,” Huang explains. In other words: you can check for NSA backdoors.

Full Story: Wired: The First Totally Open Source Laptop Is Almost Real

The specs are here.

Previously: My Smart Phone Freedom Trilogy

3D Printed Exoskeleton Give A Little Girl Use Of Her Limbs

3D printed exoskeletin

Instead of going off the shelf, doctors turned to a 3D printer from Stratasys to create custom molded parts and a lightweight vest for Emma. The result: the two-year-old who once could not lift her arms is now able to play, color and feed herself. Printing the parts also solves another major issue — Emma is growing… quickly. The adorable tot has already outgrown her first vest, but her mother just calls the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children and has a new one made. The same goes for replacement parts. Should a hinge or brace break, it need only be a matter of hours (not days or weeks) before a new one is delivered.

Engadget: 3D printed ‘Magic Arms’ give a little girl use of her limbs

It reminds me of this DIY project for building prosthetic fingers

3D Printed Fashion of Iris van Herpen

The work of Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, whose designs have been worn by the likes of Lady Gaga and Bjork, are being featured in the Groningen Museum in the Netherlands. van Herpen uses 3-D printing to make dresses like this one:

(you can see a model actually wearing it in the video above)

More images and information: 3-Der: Iris van Herpen’s 3D-printed dresses in Groningen Museum

(via Fiarce)

See also: The New Aestetic and Future Fatigue

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