Things I've seen on the web over the last two weeks that are far more important than either Kate & William's marriage or Osama Bin Laden's death. (Since when did the births, deaths, and marriages section become the headlines anyway?)

• Angela Belcher of MIT describes "growing" better batteries and solar cells with no toxic by-products using viruses ( Read more... )

The oracle offered up an interesting juxtaposition of songs this morning. First there was Garbage's Supervixen which ends with the repeated lines :
Bow down to me...bow down to me...

Which was immediately followed by Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man, which starts with
If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I' ( Read more... )

Turns out I should have said "Where's my HAL suit?" Where are the superheroes one wonders? And should we be worried thatt it's being produced by a company called Cyberdyne?

This entry was originally posted at http://mundens.dreamwidth.org/447359.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

A chemical gel that can walk like an inchworm, or looper caterpillar has been demonstrated in a Japanese robotics lab.
...
Shingo Maeda and colleagues made the colour-changing, motile gel by combining polymers that change in size depending on their chemical environment. This is based on an oscillating chemical reaction called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky ( Read more... )

MaximumPC builds a multi-touch surface from scratch, for far less then Microsoft's offering, as ell as explaining simply how they work. And that explanation makes me think that we'll be seeing a boom in this sort of tech in the areas where it provides utiity, because it's pretty damn simple ( Read more... )

When Will You Get Yours, and When Will You Connect It to the Internet?

Sex with robots

Yes. Of course we will. Some of us do now. We call them vibrators.

One step up is the implanted spinal cord stimulator:  It's been reported since 2004 that a device originally designed for chronic pain control and urinary issues can stimulate orgasm in women ( Read more... )

I have just found a reason to buy a Mac. This is exactly the sort of application I've wanted for years. Not just for what it does, but for how it does it, but waving the bar code of your book, DVD, CD, etc in front of your web-cam. Feck, for the first time I really wish I had a Mac ( Read more... )

Off The Backhas 1 Tera-byte Western Digital SATA drives for just $210. Shame I can't really afford one.

Looking forward to seeing seraphs_folly this afternoon. It seems likely we may do what we did last time she came up, which is to head in to JJ's, and then go to TNC. Will try and confirm that later ( Read more... )

Yea thats what I thought too. But that's how The Register subtitled their article on Google's interest in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).

Have you noticed how often (or should that be easily?), I am amused?

It's about time the commerce commission started thumping Telecom for pretending that DSL is broadband ! Seems Christchurch has the country's worst internet (another reason to move love!) Here's an excerpt from the Executive Summary of the REPORT FOR THE COMMERCE COMMISSION ON NEW ZEALAND BROADBAND PERFORMANCE (pdf) prepared by Epitiro-IDC :
• ( Read more... )