Without apologizing for the delay...

More news important to your future.

KurzweilAI.net Is my sister publication in a way, though I didn't discover it untill after I began this blog. A post references a New Scientist article describing new miniscule sensors that change their shape to move in the harsh Martian environment. This seems a logical step towards the possibility of nanoscale exploration of the universe.

Engadget posts a video uploaded to youtube by IBM. Big Blue apparently has some interesting ideas for the future of computing. My guess is that it wouldn't take more than three years to see this stuff ubiquitous in the market if there was enough push for it. Voice recognition at this level is doable today and the wireless technologies for the purposes demonstrated are in production. The only thing in between is software and hardware development.

Physorg.com posts an article on the Gravity Probe-B experiment, giving a thorough explanation of how the new experiment works.

Another post describes the studies scientists have done to discover the genes associated with learning and memory. Not only have they identified the genes involved, they've also made this database availible and searchable, making use of this knowledge much more efficient.

Yet another describes the current state of plastic solar panel technology and how it will soon be cost-effective to deploy.

Two more articles were posted on KurzweilAI.net in rapid fire, researchers are hard at work enabling printers to make electronics and bones from scratch. Add these to the list including plastic, chocolate, cake icing, metal, ceramics, paper, and soon organs. This is personally one of my favorite disruptive technologies. Being able to make your own stuff is what seperates people from large corporations.


Breaking with my usual trend of just the news that matters in the long run, I'd like to put in a quick shot to Swaptree, described in this DownloadSquad post. It's a new web2.0 beta that works like Ebay, only you trade items rather than buy them. They finally approved my application and I made my first trade yesterday, my copy of "Rayman: Raving Rabbids" for Stephen Hawking's "Illustrated Theory of Everything". I'll let you know when it comes in.


That's it for the moment, but I've got some news to browse for the pest of the day and you may see another post by monday.

First batch of news.

Techdirt reports that another child incapable of taking criticism nation has banned youtube for a single offensive video. The poster who uploaded the video has taken it down. As techdirt says, this sort of reaction only draws more attention to the offense in question. The proper way of censoring an idea is not to draw more attention to it.

Slashdot has a post showing patent application for a Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement. Basically, this is crowdsourcing for computers. First step towards a Manna system. I for one, do not welcome our robot-people overlords.

Slashdot is also linking an article showing how completely useless the change to daylight savings is. While the California energy department still affirms that setting our clocks back for half a year conserves energy, power companies don't seem to be feeling the difference. (Insert joke about the opposite of progress). Political bashing aside, there is a real problem with how elected officials conflict science.

And finally, Make online has a blog post up detailing Quinn Norton's body hacking talk. Hit it up for a primer on to the current state of functional body modification and some things we should look for over the next year or two. If you can stomach a ~180 MB download, there is a video link posted on BMEZine's Modblog.

Blogs aren't intended to operate in a vaccuum, so post comments and send emails to me with anything you feel like needs to be said.