technology

Douglas Engelbart, inventor of computer mouse, dies at 88

"Engelbart arrived at his crowning moment relatively early in his career, on a winter afternoon in 1968, when he delivered an hour-long presentation containing so many far-reaching ideas that it would be referred to decades later as the 'mother of all demos.' Speaking before an audience of 1,000 leading technologists in San Francisco, Engelbart, a computer scientist at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), showed off a cubic device with two rolling discs called an 'X-Y position indicator for a display system.' It was the mouse’s public debut. He never received any royalties for the mouse, which SRI patented and later licensed to Apple." Continue reading →

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Quantum Teleportation Between Atomic Systems Over Long Distances — New Reliable Technique

"A new milestone has been reached in the development of a practical quantum teleportation system — researchers have for the first time succeeded in the teleportation of information between two separate clouds of gas atoms, over long-distances. And not just once, the method is apparently already extremely reliable — working every single time that it’s been attempted. There are two glass containers, each containing a cloud of billions of caesium gas atoms. Both glass containers are enclosed in a chamber with a magnetic field. Information is teleported from the one glass cloud to the other by means of laser light." Continue reading →

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How close are we to getting superpowers?

"Next month, at a technology conference in Hong Kong, Dina Katabi, an MIT professor, will present her 'Wi-Vi' device, which uses a low-power wi-fi signal to track people moving behind walls. Last month, it was reported that scientists in Singapore have created a rudimentary invisibility cloak, which they illustrated with a video clearly designed to appeal to muggles as much as wizards – it showed a fluffy kitten entering the 'cloak' and disappearing so conclusively that a butterfly could be seen fluttering behind it. Essentially, if there’s a superpower you can think of, someone’s probably trying to develop it. Just remember: with great power comes great responsibility." Continue reading →

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The first-ever 3D-printed battery is less than 1mm wide

"In order to make a battery so small, the Harvard and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team used a 3D printer to create tiny stacks of battery electrodes. Each electrode is thinner than a strand of human hair. The battery is of the standard lithium-ion variety, so with it comes all of the faults and benefits of lithium-ion. The custom 3D printer employed by the team uses special inks that are electrochemically active, and harden into cathodes and anodes once extruded from the printer’s nozzle. The anodes and cathodes were printed in a pattern similar to a common comb, then a case and electrolyte solution were added as finishing touches." Continue reading →

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Maker Nabs A 3D Model Of Marcus Aurelius With Google Glass

"In what looks to be a first for the technology, designer and engineer Todd Blatt took 30 pictures of a bust of Marcus Aurelius with Google Glass and created a downloadable 3D model that you can grab and print. It’s fascinating that, in a few minutes, he was able to render a physical object digitally and then reprint it. These methods aren’t foolproof, but they’re very nearly so. What does this mean for the future? Well, almost anything can be copied now, from a car to a tourist’s trinket. It also means that nothing is 'safe' anymore – all it takes for IP theft of object designs to happen is a few winks with a good enough camera." Continue reading →

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Paul Rosenberg: Top 5 Reasons I Stopped Caring About Politics

"When I was young, I felt a need to understand politics, and I spent time studying. But as time progressed, I received diminishing returns on that investment. And in the past few years, I have given it up altogether. These days, my concern with politics is limited to things like these: Who is making war, and where? Where is the crime occurring in my area? Are there laws that will force me to move my businesses offshore? Beyond that, I’m really not interested. I see the headlines, but I seldom read the stories. And I’m very happy saying, 'I haven’t looked into it,' when people ask my opinion on the day’s ‘news.’ Here’s why." Continue reading →

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Want to Defend Your Privacy?

"We all have to accept the cold, hard fact of the matter, which is that this cat-and-mouse game is likely to be with us for a very long time. Those who believe they have the right to spy on us will develop ever more sophisticated ways of doing it. Those who believe we have a Constitutional right to privacy will fight tooth and nail to protect it. It's possible that the one side eventually will develop an unstoppable offense or that the other will come up with a defense that can't be breached. But that's not the way to bet. In the end, technology is completely neutral. It will evolve with no regard to how it is used. Expect those cats and mice to continue chasing each other." Continue reading →

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Why the ‘War on Drugs’ has been made redundant

"Professional but clandestine labs are rifling the scientific literature for new psychoactive drugs and synthesising them as fast as the law changes. Despite the free availability of substances as pleasurable as already banned drugs, we have not seen a massive increase in problem users and drug mortality rates have been falling. Even with the newly introduced 'instant bans', drug laws are simply not able to keep up. It has long been clear that the drug war approach of criminalising possession rather than treating problem drug-users has been futile. The war on drugs has not been lost, it has been made obsolete." Continue reading →

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Review: Ploom Model Two

"The San Francisco-based company is out to make the Nespresso of vaporizers, complete with a sleek, Made in California aesthetic and proprietary pods filled with all-natural tobacco. If vaporizers are going to get anywhere near the mainstream, they need to dispatch the silly glowing tips, finicky and flawed hardware, and horribly named 'e-juice.' They need class and sophistication, and the Ploom Model Two delivers." Continue reading →

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The Next American Revolution

"The next American Revolution will not be an event, it will be a process. Springtime for the Savior State/cartel-capitalism partnership will be brief, and by 2018-19 all the systemic flaws and disruptive trends will reassert themselves with renewed vigor. The entire current model of governance, social order and the economy will be revolutionized not by overthrow but by the process of irrelevance. The new system will be better, more humane, more flexible, more transparent, with more opportunity, for it will be everything the current corrupt, sclerotic, parasitic and exploitive system is not." Continue reading →

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