‘Spintronics, also known as magnetoelectronics, is an emerging technology that harnesses the spin of particles.
Conventional electronics ignores these rotations and instead exploits the movement or accumulation of electrons to do useful calculations or store data.
Freescale MRAM chip
Spintronics is already used in MRAM devices produced by Freescale
The movement of electrons through the tiny wires found in modern microchips is the reason why laptops become so hot.
But, by harnessing the twist and turns of particles – detected as a weak magnetic force – scientists hope to unlock almost infinite computing power and storage, without the heat.’
‘It all comes out of the “Millenium Challenge ’02” war games we staged in the Persian Gulf this summer. The big scandal was that the Opposing Force Commander, Gen. Paul van Ripen, quit mid-game because the games were rigged for the US forces to win. The scenario was a US invasion of an unnamed Persian Gulf country (either Iraq or Iran). The US was testing a new hi-tech joint force doctrine, so naturally van Riper used every lo-tech trick he could think of to mess things up. When the Americans jammed his CCC network , he sent messages by motorbike.
The truth is that van Ripen did something so important that I still can’t believe the mainstream press hasn’t made anything of it. With nothing more than a few “small boats and aircraft,” van Ripen managed to sink most of the US fleet in the Persian Gulf.
What this means is as simple and plain as a skull: every US Navy battle group, every one of those big fancy aircraft carriers we love, won’t last one single day in combat against a serious enemy.’
‘Researchers who launched an experimental cyber attack caused a generator to self-destruct, alarming the government and electrical industry about what might happen if such an attack were carried out on a larger scale, CNN has learned. [..]
Sources familiar with the experiment said the same attack scenario could be used against huge generators that produce the country’s electric power.
Some experts fear bigger, coordinated attacks could cause widespread damage to electric infrastructure that could take months to fix. [..]
In a previously classified video of the test CNN obtained, the generator shakes and smokes, and then stops.
DHS acknowledged the experiment involved controlled hacking into a replica of a power plant’s control system. Sources familiar with the test said researchers changed the operating cycle of the generator, sending it out of control.’
A list of hundreds of hoaxes that have been perpetrated throughout history.
These are images from inside a Russian bomb making factory.
Lots of cool looking bits and pieces with Russian text on them.
Seems like a fucken lot of nerve agent to store in that manner tho. 🙂
‘Harvard physicists have shown that specially treated diamond coatings can keep water frozen at body temperature, a finding that may have applications in future medical implants.
Doctoral student Alexander Wissner-Gross and Efthimios Kaxiras, physics professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics, spent a year building and examining computer models that showed that a layer of diamond coated with sodium atoms will keep water frozen up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit.
In ice, water molecules are arranged in a rigid framework that gives the substance its hardness. The process of melting is somewhat like a building falling down: pieces that had been arranged into a rigid structure move and flow against one another, becoming liquid water.
The computer model shows that whenever a water molecule near the diamond-sodium surface starts to fall out of place, the surface stabilizes it and reassembles the crystalline ice structure.’
‘About a hundred times a day, from anywhere in the world, a phone call comes in that sounds something like this: I think I’ve got a terrorist suspect here, can you check it out?
Answering those calls are dozens of operations specialists in a highly secure center in a classified location in northern Virginia. With access to the government’s secret terror watch list, their job is to make sure nobody on the list falls through the cracks.
CNN got a firsthand look inside the Terrorist Screening Center recently — but not until a security officer who accompanied the TV crew at all times bellowed to the hub of the center’s operation, “Unsecure!” to make sure any classified information was protected from view.
For the first time publicly, officials told CNN the consolidated watch list has 300,000 names.’
‘A large crane is lifting a skid of networking supplies onto the roof of an office building when the cable snaps and drops the equipment onto a car below.’
I don’t know why the driver ran off like that.
(2.3meg Flash video)
see it here »
This guy make some lights that flash in time to music, out of a condom, some LEDs and part of a drink bottle.
(2.8meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘The Soviet engineers gazed into the abandoned tunnel with dismay. It was 1974 and work was scheduled to resume on the construction of the Baikal-Amur Magistral (BAM), a railway line in north-eastern Siberia. The Dusse-Alin Tunnel had been completed in an earlier phase of the undertaking, as evidenced by the inscription “1947-1950” over the entrance and the busts of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin that earlier workers had hewn out of the nearby rock. But the harsh climate and intervening years had not been kind to the permafrost-piercing passage. Peering into the gaping hole, the worried workers could see something glinting inside. The BAM project, perhaps the greatest civil engineering endeavour the world has ever seen, had encountered yet another problem.’
‘Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we now have proof of the things we’ve been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers.
While browsing through the email we identified the companies that are also active in Sweden and we have tonight reported these incidents to the police. The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level.
The companies that are being reported are the following:
* Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
* Emi Music Sweden AB
* Universal Music Group Sweden AB
* Universal Pictures Nordic AB
* Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Atari Nordic AB
* Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
* Ubisoft Sweden AB
* Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB
Stay tuned for updates.’
This is a trick to turn one 6V lantern battery into 32 AA batteries.
This guys reaction to the failure is hilarious. 🙂
I’ve attached the original lantern battery trick video aswell.
(950kB and 2.6meg Flash videos)
see it here »
‘A scientist thinks Australia’s only non-commercial satellite may have run out of battery power.
The 58-kilogram FedSat has been operating since 2002.
It was only supposed to last for three years.
The University of South Australia has been responsible for its day-to-day operation and says it has lost contact with the public satellite.
Scientist Andrew Parfitt says it could orbit Earth for another century before burning up.’
‘A man awaiting trial on child sex charges in the southern US state of Arkansas tried to saw off his right leg in an apparent escape bid, police said today.
Days before he was due to appear in court on charges of rape and engaging children in sexually explicit conduct, Jerry Scholes sawed down to the bone of his right calf, just above the point where he had been fitted with an electronic tracking anklet, Detective Sergeant Doroteo Delacruz told AFP by phone.
“The speculation is he was trying to escape,” Delacruz, who handled the case for the police department in the town of Malvern, said.
“If he had succeeded in cutting off the leg, he would not have set off the alarm on the monitoring device and he would have had 48 hours before anyone knew he had done it,” Delacruz said.’
‘Dr. Whippy, had people queue despite the wet wet weather in the streets of Linz during ars electronica. The machine proffers soft scoop ice cream according to the perceived unhappiness level of the customer.
“Employing voice stress analysis of the user’s answers to specific questions, varying degrees of unhappiness are measured and the counteractive quantity of ice cream is dispensed: The more unhappy you are, the more ice cream you need.”‘
‘In Alabama they come down hard on girls destroying your porn. Gina Carano of Birmingham, Alabama spent a few minutes checking out her boyfriend’s iPod while he was in the shower. After a few minutes of of shuffling through it, she found a video of her boyfriend and another girl having a little bedroom romp. Carano, in a fit of rage, stomped the iPod on the floor and then flushed it down the toilet.
Carano went to her boy friend who was still in the shower, slapped his face and told him what she had done. She told him that she had had enough and would never see him again. At least she thought she would never see him again. Two hours later the police came to her house and arrested her for assault and destroying private property.’
‘Hackers are taking credit for at least three breaches at anti-piracy firm MediaDefender. The newly revealed attacks threaten to turn what started as an embarrassing e-mail leak into a full-blown security meltdown for the company.
The revelations began Saturday, when more than 6,000 internal company e-mails were exposed in a 700-megabyte BitTorrent download. A note from the hackers that accompanied the download points to a MediaDefender employee’s personal Gmail account as the source of the purloined mail, which covered six months of internal correspondence.
At least two more MediaDefender hacks have emerged since Saturday. In one, hackers obtained a copy of an internal company database identifying some of the decoy files the company has slipped onto peer-to-peer networks. In the other, intruders released a digital recording of a private phone call that appears to be a discussion between MediaDefender personnel and staff at the New York attorney general’s office.’
‘Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (ÂŁ343m; $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission in a long-running competition dispute.
The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position.
A probe concluded in 2004 that Microsoft was guilty of freezing out rivals in server software and products such as media players.’
‘A Vermont man sent a 16-year-old Enfield girl disturbing text messages and pictures of him wearing a diaper, police said.
Enfield police said Lawrence Robarge, 48, of Vermont, sent the messages to the girl earlier in September. The girl didn’t recognize the number, but she contacted police when she saw the messages and pictures.
“They were very disturbing, given her age and what the text messages say,” Chief Richard Crate Jr. said.
Police said that one picture sent to the girl shows a bottle of baby powder and two diapers. A caption with the photo reads, “Show this to your lady friends then have them call me if their [sic] interested. OKAY???”
Crate said that Robarge dialed the number at random and reached the girl.’
‘A batch of laptops pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium was found to have been infected with a 13-year-old boot sector virus.
Those of you with a long memory will vividly recall the year 1994: Nirvana’s lead singer Kurt Cobain died, South Africa held its first multi-racial elections, and Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party. Oh, and Microsoft’s operating system was the quaint, pre-NT Windows for Workgroups.
But it was a year that also saw the arrival of a boot sector computer virus known as Stoned.Angelina which moved the original master boot record to cylinder 0, head 0, sector 9.
It would appear that this teenage virus has not yet been consigned to the history books.
According to Virus Bulletin, the consignment of infected Medion laptops – which could number anything up to 100,000 shipments – had been sold in Danish and German branches of retail giant Aldi.’
‘It sounds too good to be true – not to mention the fact that it violates almost every known law of physics.
But British scientists claim they have invented a revolutionary device that seems to ‘create’ energy from virtually nothing.
Their so-called thermal energy cell could soon be fitted into ordinary homes, halving domestic heating bills and making a major contribution towards cutting carbon emissions. [..]
Even the makers of the device are at a loss to explain exactly how it works – but sceptical independent scientists carried out their own tests and discovered that the 12in x 2in tube really does produce far more heat energy than the electrical energy put in.’
‘Are you sick of pigeons crapping all over your pool or backyard? Are plastic owls not getting the job done? It might be time to try the motion activated sprinkler defense system.’
(2.7meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Our story begins with the sales call. It was a door-to-door salesman, and after going through everything I was satisfied with what was being offered. I made sure that everything (except one thing, and that would come back to haunt me) was written down. All the fees being waived? In writing, each listed separately. Cost? In writing. I filed away the paperwork and waited for the installation. Having read about installation horror stories (on the Consumerist), I decided to stay home and supervise the installation that Comcast was going to be doing. It’s a good thing I did.’
‘Behold! The work is now complete.
Once started, the machine opens the each page of the book and scans the content. The whole process is automatic.
The lesson of this story is that LEGO is great.’
‘A police operation to covertly follow a Central Otago man came to an abrupt halt this week when the man found tracking devices planted in his car, ripped them out and listed them for sale on Trade Me. [..]
Williams said a cellphone sim card in one of the devices appeared to transmit messages to the mobile phone of Detective Sergeant Derek Shaw, of the Central Otago CIB.
Williams provided The Press with emails from Shaw saying: “If you have got something of ours it would be good to get it back. You can call me and I can come meet you.” [..]
Williams said he did not know why police were interested in him. He spent two years in jail “20 years ago” for selling marijuana to an undercover policeman, but had no convictions since then.
Williams said the devices were not hard to find and he described the operation as “a bumbling attempt” by “weirdos”.’
‘What else can inkjet technology be used for? Injecting drugs into humans, according to Hewlett-Packard.
The company is licensing a medical patch it has developed to Ireland’s Crospon that potentially can replace hypodermic needles or pills for delivering vaccines or other types of medication to patients. The patch contains up to 90,000 microneedles per square inch, microprocessors and a thermal unit.
Medications contained in the patch are heated and then injected through the needles. Processors can monitor drug delivery, deliver doses over extended periods of time or deliver drugs in response to a patient’s vital signs (e.g., blood pressure or heart rate), depending on how it is programmed.’
It turns out that toy radar guns work pretty well. This is a simple modification that doesn’t actually seem to do much more than change the on/off switch from a momentary button to an actual switch. But it’s kinda cool anyways. 🙂
(3.4meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘The National Library of France (BnF) has an amazing collection of prints from 1910 which depict life in the year 2000. They are credited to Villemard.
There’s speculation that they were included with “foodstuffs” of the era [..]’
‘An Italian university student’s cellphone screensaver photo got him busted on marijuana charges.
The student allegedly made the mistake of taking a picture of himself standing among a patch of marijuana plants and using it as his screensaver photo, ANSA reported Tuesday. Then, as luck would have it, he dropped the waist pouch he used to carry the phone and it was picked up by a retiree who turned it over to police.
When the police called him in, the student allegedly broke down and confessed he owned the pot crop, the news agency said. He took the police to the spot where he was growing his illegal crop and was promptly booked.’
‘SABLE-3 was launched on Saturday, August 11th, 2007, at 9:31 AM with a payload, consisting of a Nikon Coolpix P2 digital camera set to take 1 image every minute and a Byonics MicroTrak 300 APRS Tracker, that the Kaysam 1200 gram balloon carried to over 117,597 feet. The last payload camera photo from the ground was just before it was launched, at 9:31 AM, and the last photo before the balloon burst was the photo above, at 12:01 PM, exactly 2½ hours or 150 images later. And what a photo. The composition couldn’t have been better or the horizon more level and out of the 196 images taken during the flight, only 1 other image is as good. What are the chances?’
