Everyone's heard of the Westboro Baptist Church, right? The "god hates fags" and "god hates sweden" guys. They decided to turn up at Comic-Con and protest against... something. Presumably comics are the tools of satan or whatnot. What they weren't planning on was the epic counter-demonstration that all the geeks had ready. Very much worth a look. ( Read more... )

Gizmodo has a piece on a guy from Brooklyn who's created a working fusion reactor at home. Apparently he's part of the growing number of DIY fusion enthusiasts around the world. While it's unlikely they'll end up making any fundamental breakthroughs, perhaps they'll be able to investigate methods of making reactor construction more economical and ( Read more... )

Man, I'm terrible at updating. Have been rather busy wrapping up the "Access to Higher Education" course I'm doing and looking forward to a relaxing summer break before starting uni.

I mentioned last post that I recently acquired an HTC Desire, one of the newer Android smartphones. I've had a while to get used to it now, and it's a genuinely ( Read more... )

The US military is experimenting with using lasers and nanotech to treat wounds. Very awesome.

fMRI "lie detectors" have seen their first brush with the courtroom. While I'm no expert, the technology seems to be in its infancy, and it's extremely difficult to test it in realistic situations. Probably good that it isn't yet deciding guilt ( Read more... )

Google have come up with a brilliant advertisement for their Chrome browser based on footage shot at 2,700 FPS comparing the speed at which Chrome loads with three amusing set-ups including an electrical arc. Definitely worth a watch and, for what it's worth, it's worth giving Chrome a look. It may not yet have the same range of add-ons that ( Read more... )

If you follow tech news at all, you've almost certainly heard about the raid on Jason Chen, a blogger who writes for Gizmodo, a tech site which spends a disproportionate of its time obsessing semi-religiously over the minutiae of Apple's latest releases. The short story is that some guy found an iPhone 4G prototype in a bar which one of Apple's ( Read more... )

On the off-chance that you're in LA, there's a Pro-Test demonstration going on later today which, I'm rather pleased to say, has received an endorsement from the Society for Neuroscience who (being involved in the most interesting scientific discipline) are inherently awesome. That is all.

Why bother taking the time to carefully craft appropriate legislation regarding a complex technical issue when you can have 60-year-olds with no fucking clue what they're talking about write the law instead? Seems to be the standard for passing new laws these days.

The Digital Economy Bill has apparently been approved thanks to the fact that half ( Read more... )

Excellent news- Simon Singh has won his appeal in the libel trial brought by the British Chiropractic Association- a band of notably deluded liars. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a general shift to less utterly retarded libel laws.

Also, does anyone know what's going on with the proposal to update libel laws to cover the internet too? I ( Read more... )

Very interesting TED video has gone up with Bill Gates talking about his investments in fission energy and how it's probably our best bet for an environmentally and economically friendly primary source of power. Very much worth a watch ( Read more... )