Author: The Freedom Watch Staff

This author has written 11091 articles

How 3-D Printing is Going to Change the World

"Three dimensional printing is going to be huge. Some geek friends are already starting to play around with it. With some relatively rudimentary equipment, they have printed out some pretty cool 3-D items. Most interesting from a functional perspective is they had a heavy duty steel cabinet with a missing part. They were able to print out the missing part instead of ordering, paying and waiting for the part to be delivered. They tell me 3-D Kinko-type copy shops are not far away. My guess is that we will all eventually have 3-D copiers in our homes and offices. Need a gun, coffee maker or clock? Print it out." Continue reading →

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Smugglers use cannon to fire 85 pounds of marijuana into Arizona

"In what appears to be yet another innovation in the drug war arms race, authorities said they found 33 cans of marijuana weighing about 85 pounds, and worth approximately $42,500, strewn across a field on Friday. A search turned up a carbon dioxide tank likely used to propel the containers. The emergence of an actual cannon, though surprising, isn’t an entirely unexpected development. The National Guard said last year that it spotted drug smugglers using catapults. Some have even resorted to homemade submarines — one of which sunk off the coast of Panama just last week." Continue reading →

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Turning urine into brain cells could help fight Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

"Chinese researchers have devised a new technique for reprogramming cells from human urine into immature brain cells that can form multiple types of functioning neurons and glial cells. The technique, published today in the journal Nature Methods, could prove useful for studying the cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and for testing the effects of new drugs that are being developed to treat them." Continue reading →

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Doctors eradicate girl’s cancer by reprogramming HIV

"A reprogrammed version of the virus that causes AIDS was used by doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to wipe out a little girl’s terminal leukemia. According to The New York Times, 6-year-old Emma Whitehead didn’t have much longer to live when the radical and untested therapy was pitched to her parents. But after two relapses, they’d exhausted all other options. So, using modified HIV that disables transmission of the virus, doctors loaded in up with custom T-cells that reprogrammed her immune system to fight off her leukemia." Continue reading →

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Paralyzed woman controls robotic arm with thoughts alone

"A woman who is paralysed from the neck down has stunned doctors with her extraordinary skill at using a robotic arm that is controlled by her thoughts alone. Several groups around the world are developing so-called brain-machine interfaces to control robotic arms and other devices, such as computers, but none has achieved such impressive results. Researchers said Jan was able to move the robotic arm back, forward, right, left, and up and down only two days into her training. Within weeks she could reach out, and change the position of the hand to pick up objects on a table and put them down at another location." Continue reading →

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SpaceShipTwo edges closer to powered flight

"A long-awaited major milestone for a leading suborbital vehicle developer—the first powered flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo—is a little bit closer to taking place after a test flight Wednesday. Virgin Galactic reported SpaceShipTwo flew its first glide flight in 'powered flight configuration', with its rocket motor system, including tanks and nozzle, installed. The flight also featured the first flight with thermal protection material installed on the vehicle’s leading edges, components needed for high-speed powered flight." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin’s Potential Impact on the Global Gaming Industry

"Among the discussions Ver and Voorhees conducted at the Social Gaming Asia Summit was with one of Macau’s leading junket operators. While declining to identify the operator by name, Ver told GamblingCompliance that he and Voorhees had 'spent the whole day' discussing Bitcoin’s potential with the company, which was 'in the early process of setting it up so that all their customers can exchange to and from Bitcoins with the local currency in nine of the major casinos in Macau, including the Wynn, the Venetian and the MGM Grand.'" Continue reading →

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These Are the Best Internet Service Providers

"If you're looking for the fastest, most reliable internet service provider, here you have the ranking of all the major ISPs in the United States. It's actual, real world performance—compiled by Netflix from all its customer data: 30 million members watching 1 billion hours of movie content every month. That's a lot of data, so you can be sure this is a reliable classification. The best is Google Fiber. According to Netflix, 'Google Fiber is now the most consistently fast ISP in America, according to actual user experience on Netflix streams in November.'" Continue reading →

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Ireland is cool for Google as its data servers like the weather

"Since Google’s arrival, south-east central Dublin has been rapidly transformed into a technological hub similar to Berlin’s Silicon Allee or London’s Silicon Roundabout. Other companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Zynga, HP and Dropbox have all set up in Dublin. Ireland has been able to attract these world-famous corporations despite the depth of its financial and economic crisis, due to the lobbying work of the country’s Industrial Development Authority; a highly educated, young, English-speaking workforce; and, crucially, the Republic’s rock-bottom 12.5% corporation tax. And now the weather can be added to those factors." Continue reading →

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Which Countries Are Most at Risk from Internet Disconnection

"The key to the Internet's survival is the Internet's decentralization — and it's not uniform across the world. In some countries, international access to data and telecommunications services is heavily regulated. There may be only one or two companies who hold official licenses to carry voice and Internet traffic to and from the outside world, and they are required by law to mediate access for everyone else. Under those circumstances, it's almost trivial for a government to issue an order that would take down the Internet." Continue reading →

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