It’s hundreds of times thinner than a human hair but as sensitive as a human finger. Researchers have devised a nanosheet
that can be wrapped around any surface — such as that of a surgical instrument or a robotic hand — to mimic the sensitivity of touch
A Taiwanese company called A-Zone International has given the iPod a retro spin with the iPod Dock Valve Station, a docking station that features an elegant 1940s-style valve amplifier
Toshiba announced a 2.5-inch hard drive with a 200GB capacity, effectively raising the bar for mobile storage. The drive uses a new technology called perpendicular recording
Cthulhu Scarf Felted Detail originally uploaded by Red Wolf
The Cthulhu scarf has been felted and is now ready to take on the world with all his tentacle-y menace. Well, perhaps after he’s dried.
Still a bit iffy on whether the extra length is a good or bad thing. As he’ll eventually make his way to Scotland, I’m sure the extra length will come in handy. For Australia, perhaps not. I may leave the length at two balls of yarn if I do another one.
What happens when you combine 200 litres of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It’s amazing and completely insane. The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes. It’s an hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas
Google has just released the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox. This extension allows you to save your bookmarks, history and passwords on Google servers, effectively giving you a roaming profile
, which you can sync on any computer running Firefox (and the extension, of course)
The NSA is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in Internet technology — specifically the forthcoming semantic web
championed by the Web standards organisation W3C — to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals — via Slashdot
Cthulhu Scarf Knitted originally uploaded by Red Wolf
As the Yorick scarf has gone off to its happy new home, I thought I’d mod the pattern and go for something a little more tentacle-y. As I know what to expect from the yarn, I once more went for the Jo Sharp Luxury 8ply DK Pure Wool in violet, because you can never have too much purple in your life.
The pattern is based on Yorick from Knitty.
I dropped the jaw and left out the nose parts of the pattern and knitted each half until I ran out of wool. Then I added the tentacles using i-cord, used the remainder of the third ball to lengthen one half and grafted the two pieces together.
Now I just have to felt it. My hands will not be happy.
A recent vote in the US House of Representatives has led to a rejection of the principle of Net Neutrality from the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (Cope Act), in spite of massive lobbying from prominent businesses
Microsoft is staking its claim in the high-performance computing territory with the launch of an OS specifically designed for computer clusters used by engineers and scientists
German police have arrested a man on suspicion of murdering a woman with a sausage. Authorities said the man had given a patchy account of events, acknowledging that he may have administered
a bockwurst
iTunes facing fresh legal attacks in several European countries. Government consumer protection agencies in Norway, Denmark and Sweden want Apple to lift restrictions that prevent customers from playing music they bought through iTunes on devices made by Apple’s rivals.
Microsoft acknowledged that it needs to better inform users that its tool for determining whether a computer is running a pirated copy of Windows also quietly checks in daily with the software maker. The company said the undisclosed daily check is a safety measure designed to allow the tool, called Windows Genuine Advantage, to quickly shut down in case of a malfunction. The EULA is suppose to disclose this daily call-in feature. Lauren Weinstein, who is co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, was one of the first people to notice the daily communications to Microsoft
This week’s launch by Google of an online spreadsheet, which is currently being tested by a limited set of users, has stirred up a lot of controversy around the Internet. There are privacy concerns about users storing financial data on Google’s servers. Just how secure are these servers, and how long will Google guarantee to maintain users’ data?
A man shouting that god would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal’s enclosure — via The Pagan Prattle Online
The military wants to turn odour recognition into a science to help fight terror. The Unique Signature Detection Project
, is designed to help identify terrorists based on scents they secrete in their sweat, tears, urine and other bodily fluids — via digg
A team of scientists and surgeons at the Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital have developed a method of growing new organs within a patient’s body. The cells have been grown in a plastic chamber under the patients’ skin
Queensland Police are to be given power to force suspects to hand over passwords and encryption codes
Those looking forward to built-in Adobe PDF support in the forthcoming Office 2007 productivity suite and Windows Vista operating system might have to go without. Microsoft announced that it will remove support for the electronic document technology after negotiations with Adobe broke down
Chemical abortion will be available in far north Queensland from next month following the importation of Australia’s first consignment of the RU486 abortion pill
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