A recent study has determined that Narwhal tusks are not for fighting or breaking through ice, but are highly sensitive sensory organs. The close-ups showed that 10 million nerve endings tunnel from the tusk’s core toward its outer surface, and can detect subtle changes of temperature, pressure, particle gradients and probably much else
Google is ramping up its operations in Australia following its acquisition of a local mapping software startup, Where2, snapping up computer science graduates from university campuses to expand its Google Maps offering. The company would not comment on the recruitment drive, but AustralianIT understands Google is looking for 15 graduates to work in the Sydney headquarters of Google Maps, in addition to the 12 software engineers already working there
Two satellites have become the first to exchange information from different orbits using a laser. The feat may lead to super-fast data-relay systems between spacecraft. The laser link took place on Friday between two satellites designed to test communications technologies
Community Voicemail offers free voicemail boxes to homeless and unemployed people who are seeking work, so they’ll have a way for prospective employers to reach them. The programme is very successful too: Workers distributed voicemail numbers to 145 people over six months, and a whopping 70% found jobs within two months
— via Boing Boing
In recent tests by Stephanie Schuckers, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clarkston University, she has shown that, among other things, biometric security measures were fooled 90% of the time by simple attacks like Play-Doh moulds. Schuckers’ biometric research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Homeland Security and the Department of Defence. She is currently assessing spoofing vulnerability in fingerprint scanners and designing methods to correct for these as part of a $3.1 million interdisciplinary research project funded through the NSF
A Google engineer has warned that if the performance per watt of today’s computers doesn’t improve, the electrical costs of running them could end up far greater than the initial hardware price tag. That situation that wouldn’t bode well for Google, which relies on thousands of its own servers
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Colorado says that the names and license plate numbers of about 30 people who protested three years ago in Colorado Springs were put into FBI domestic-terrorism files
The US Air Force has released its new mission statement, which reads: The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defence of the United States of America and its global interests
to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace
Photocritic.org has posted a great guide to making your own inexpensive macro photography rig from cannibalised lens — and body-covers and a Pringles can — via MAKEblog
Engineers at NEC have developed a flexible battery that is less than a millimetre thick that can be charged in half a minute. The battery has been designed for use in applications such as active RFID cards and could provide enough power to keep such cards running for several weeks before requiring a recharge
Yahoo has acquired del.icio.us, a New York-based startup that is considered a pioneer in social bookmarking, a type of online service that lets users save, annotate, and tag their favorite web pages and share their lists with other users
linear has done what was thought to be impossible: he has opened his hard drive and installed a clear acrylic window. And it still works
William Morris Fox Tapestry originally uploaded by Red Wolf
The second phase of the William Morris fox tapestry for my mother’s antique chair is completed.
Now I have to start the third and final phase, which means doing another one of these
Public Domain Torrents offers an extensive collection of Classic and B-Movie torrents. The copyright of these movies has expired so you are free to share them — via digg
The voluntary student unionism (VSU) legislation has passed the Senate. Loony fundie Family First Senator Steve Fielding voted in favour of the bill after doing a dodgy backroom deal with John Howard
Researchers at the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service in Washington state say the long, loud pant is the sound of a dog laughing, and it has a direct impact on the behavior of other dogs. When they played the sound of a dog panting over the loudspeaker, the gaggle of dogs at the shelter kept right on barking. But when they played the dog version of laughing, all 15 barking dogs went quiet within about a minute — via Boing Boing
The New Oxford American Dictionary is adding podcasting to the dictionary. A year ago it was rejected because not enough people were reading it, but, in a ode to the speed of technology’s growth, it is being declared the word of the year. Podcasting has been in the Oxford Dictionary of English since last summer. Podcast beat out words such as lifehack and rootkit for inclusion in the dictionaries. I guess no one needs to know what a rootkit is — Slashdot
Australian Senators wants Australians’ internet connections to be automatically filtered by ISPs. Anyone who wants to view pornography or other adult material
(details not specified) must apply to their ISP to be given access to it. Another step towards becoming a nanny state — via Slashdot
A US government study into the prevalence of dodgy web sites has found that 3.89 million domain names, or 8.6%, were registered with false or incomplete information
An Albuquerque TV station has discovered strange landscape markings [BugMeNot] etched in New Mexico’s barren northern reaches, resemble crop circles that are recognisable only from a high altitude. Also, they are directly connected to the Church of Scientology. The loony fundies tried to persuade KRQE not to air its report about the aerial signposts marking a Scientology compound that includes a huge vault built into a mountainside
that was constructed to protect the works of L Ron Hubbard, the late crap science fiction writer who founded the church in the 1950s — via Feòrag
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