Shane Cory Potter and his many and varied interest.

New BoingBoing 

Infographic: the compleat and astounding history of storage

Steampunk fiction for your mobile

Paul Pope illustrates Japan's grooviest concept cars

New Christian Science Monitor 

No items were found

New ComputerWorld 

Apple moves to kill second Psystar lawsuit

Retail mania, IE woes, EU charges

What Should I Do With Windows.old

New Cool Tools 

Invisible Glove

Evernote

Taylor Luggage Scale

Double Pie Carrier

Op/Tech Wrap

New Engadget 

Sony outs world's first TransferJet chips for short-range wireless transfer

Samurai of Kuroda granted a cybernetic upgrade

ASUS Eee PC 1201HA now on sale in the US

New GapingVoid Cartoons 

New MAKE Blog 

Keepon Bento box

Steampunk lightbulb terrarium

Holiday gift guides on CRAFT

Inside the Halo armor with Vrogy

Music video using cardiograph-like instruments

New Rolling Stone music videos 

Exclusive Clip: Jack's Mannequin Documentary

New Music Report: White Denim

At The Movies With Peter Travers: "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans"

Backstage With The Dead Weather

Behind the Cover Shoot: Taylor Lautner

Behind the Photo: Jamie Tworkowski

New Scientific American 

Conquering cancer with implants? Bioengineered vaccines and magnetic nanodiscs show promise

Rather than surgically removing tumors , what if doctors could simply implant new tools in our bodies to do the work internally? One team of researchers has been able to vanquish tumors in mice by implanting bioengineered disks filled with tumor-specific antigens, and another has developed magnetized nanodiscs to induce cancer cells destroy themselves.  [More]

Solar Power Costs 50% Lower than Last Year

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Finally: Social science data that could be all about you

Early next year, 350 or so Penn State students and staff, as well as local retirees and others, will wander around State College, Pa., for three weeks, pausing intermittently to drop their heads down as they tap on smart phones to answer detailed questions about how they feel immediately after nearly every social interaction they have. [More]

NFL gains yards in its treatment of players' head injuries

As early as this season's playoffs, National Football League players will have to get the approval of an independent neurosurgeon or neurologist before they can return to play following a head injury or concussion. Currently, each team's general physician gives the "okay" for players to get back in the game, sometimes, experts fear, when athletes have not fully recovered. [More]

NASA Scanner Offers Clues To Whale Hearing

It really is rocket science--researchers are using huge x-ray scanners from NASA to understand how sonar might be affecting the hearing of large ocean mammals. These scanners are usually used to inspect the space shuttle's solid fuel rockets. Navy sonar has been accused of harming the hearing of large marine mammals such as whales and dolphins. So Navy-sponsored researchers at San Diego State University and UC San Diego developed a method of using the NASA machines on whale skulls. [More]

10 Views of Earth from the Moon, Mars and Beyond [Slide Show]

In 1990 the NASA spacecraft Voyager 1, careening across the solar system on its way to becoming the most distant human-made object in space, took a glimpse back at the planet it had left 13 years earlier. Six billion kilometers away, Earth was barely distinguishable against the backdrop of space--a "pale blue dot," as astronomer Carl Sagan would famously dub it. [More]

Obama and (climate) change: Indian edition

The U.S. launched this week a historic program to advance clean energy in India --where simply moving the 40 percent of the South Asian nation's citizens who still burn coal, dung or wood to electricity could deliver major improvements for development, clean air and climate. Last week, it was a similar historic program to advance clean energy with China as well as a shared commitment to meaningful steps as part of the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks. And, to top it off, Obama has announced plans to swing by the talks on Dec. 9 as well as to publicly commit to U.S. emission reductions "in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels in 2020 and ultimately in line with final U.S. energy and climate legislation." [More]

Monitoring Live Brains Reveals Plasticity

The idea that the adult brain changes with experience was once a radical idea, but it is now well accepted that certain areas--say, the motor cortex, when learning a new physical skill--can grow new neurons or create stronger connections. Now scientists report that the brain is even more mutable than suspected. Thanks to an unconventional research technique, neuroscientists have found the first physical proof that new experiences and information have wide-ranging effects throughout both hemispheres of the brain, rather than just creating connections in one discrete area. [More]

Recommended: Science Coffee Table Book Holiday Gift Ideas

Feast your eyes and feed your brain with our favorite science books worthy of the coffee table. Topping our list are volumes commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope. Gal?gos: Preserving Darwin's Legacy [More]

Researchers Turn to Artificial Intelligence and Real Data to Improve War Games

Virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allow players to adopt virtual personas or engage in combat on digital battlefields, but what if similar technology could let government intelligence analysts play out antiterrorism scenarios that would help with better understandings of the consequences of Middle East policy recommendations? A team of researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., believe they have created just such a virtual world using computational models that mimic terrorist behavior based a variety of factors, including social, political and religious beliefs. [More]

What Explains Past Climate Change?

Roughly 1,000 years ago, Europe enjoyed several centuries of balmier average temperatures. Dubbed the "Medieval Warm Period," it was the last time before the present that agriculture could flourish in Greenland. This era also shows yet again that changes to natural systems can drive local climate change--and provided fodder for countless misunderstandings about the nature of present day global warming.   But new research shows that the MWP, as it is affectionately known in acronym-happy science circles, as well as the "Little Ice Age" that almost immediately followed it (and spelled doom for the Greenland Norse) were likely the result of fluctuations in the sun's strength and the frequency of volcanic eruptions, among other natural causes.   [More]

Single-celled life does a lot with very little

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Wind Farmers Go To School On Fish

The use of wind power continues to soar around the world. In 2008 the U.S. actually surpassed Germany as the world's top producer of energy from wind. It might seem that there aren't many improvements to make to what's essentially a passive technology. But researchers at the California Institute of Technology say the way fish school will help create more efficient designs for wind farms. They presented their research at a meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics. When fish swim, they leave little swirling vortices in their wake. By swimming together in a school, they can transfer energy to one another through these vortices. Wind behaves much as a liquid does. So the engineers have taken wind turbines that spin on vertical axes--these are different from the traditional horizontal wind turbine mostly in use today. On a computer, they've positioned the turbines close enough together that as one spins, it then directs the wind to its neighbor. [More]

Cassini flyby shows Enceladus's wrinkled surface

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People Hear with Their Skin, As Well As Their Ears

The act of hearing is a group effort for the human body's organs, involving the ears, the eyes and also, according to the results of a new study, the skin. [More]

Walls to fall: 6 ideas at the intellectual frontier, from business models based on selflessness to glasses-free 3-D TV

Turning Seaweed into the Fuel of the Future

Seaweed holds promise as more than an ingredient in a purifying face mask or a maki roll. So say researchers at E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co ., which alongside Seattle-based Bio Architecture Lab (BAL) has secured $9 million from the Department of Energy to explore seaweed's potential as a feedstock for biobutanol, an advanced biofuel. [More]

Plans for cutting emissions could also benefit health

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Inhaling Bacteria with Cigarette Smoke

Cigarettes contain hundreds of different strains of bacteria , including many human pathogens that may play a role in lung diseases and respiratory infections, new research shows. [More]

Spin success for silicon

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What would rings around Earth look like?

A video currently making the rounds on the Web ponders an intriguing astronomical scenario: What if Earth had rings, as Saturn does? [More]

Say What? Mice that Resist Hearing Loss Could Help Aging Ears

Amygdala's Acidic Aspiration Answer

Maybe it's happened to you. You think you have a fever. So you pop a thermometer in your mouth and try to breathe through your nose to get an accurate reading. But you're totally stuffed up, so you experience this moment of complete panic because you can't get enough air. Well, a new study in the journal Cell says you can thank your amygdala for that. Because this key member of the brain's fear circuitry can directly sense suffocation, and trigger feelings of terror. [More]

Vibrating Technology Promises to Replace Biopsies in Diagnosing Diseased Tissue

Biopsies , although invasive and unpleasant, are typically the best way to diagnose the health of human tissue, especially the liver. A group of researchers and physicians at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is hoping to change this through a relatively new approach known as magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) , which they developed to measure the stiffness or elasticity of tissue and organs without the need for a scalpel. [More]

Stem Cells Could Offer New Source for Skin Grafts

Researchers are now one step closer to being able to use skin tissue derived from stem cells for the treatment of burn victims, according to a study published November 21 in The Lancet . [More]

New species galore in discoveries around the world

I usually write about species that we're about to see for the last time, but the past few weeks have brought news of literally hundreds of newly discovered species. Some of these may not be around for long, though, so here are some introductions while they can still be made: [More]

Alzheimer's Update: New Insight May Speed Therapies (preview)

Kassie Rose, 30 years old, faces a frightening prospect: if a genetic coin toss fails to go her way, she could lose her mind within a decade or two. A mutation that causes Alz­heimer's disease runs in her family, the DeMoes of North Dakota. The odds of any DeMoe harboring the mutation are 50-50, and if the mutation is present, the chances of developing early-onset Alzheimer's--the type that erodes memory before age 65--are 100 percent. Five of the six DeMoe siblings--Rose's father and her aunts and uncles--have the mutation. One man is in a nursing home in his mid-50s; a second, younger, is on his way. A sister in her late 40s is already noticing her first symptoms. The next generation is tortured with the decision of whether to get tested. Rose, for now, chooses not to know. After all, she is unlikely to benefit much from the information: Alz­heimer's remains incurable and, largely, unpreventable as well. [More]

Portrait of a Black Hole (preview)

You have probably seen the TV commercial in which a cell phone technician travels to remote places and asks on his phone, "Can you hear me now?" Imagine this technician traveling to the center of our Milky Way galaxy, wherein lurks a massive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), weighing as much as 4.5 million suns. As the technician approached within 10 million kilometers of the black hole, we would hear his cadence slow down and his voice deepen and fade, eventually turning to a monotone whisper with diminishing reception. If we were to look, we would see his image turn increasingly red and dim as he became frozen in time near the black hole's boundary, known as the event horizon. The technician himself, however, would experience no slowing of time and would see nothing strange at the location of the event horizon. He would know he had crossed the horizon only when he heard us say, "No, we cannot hear you very well!" He would have no way of sharing his last impressions with us--nothing, not even light, can escape from gravity's extreme pull inside the event horizon. A minute after he crossed the horizon, the gravitational forces deep inside the hole would tear him apart. [More]

One for the Ages: Bristlecone Pines Break 4,650-Year Growth Record

Bristlecone pine trees dot the White Mountains in eastern California, giving the stark and rocky landscape one of its few highly visible signs of life. These gnarly-barked trees can survive at altitudes of up to 3,470 meters, although their growth rate at these heights is limited because of cold temperatures. But those limits have been loosening lately. In the past 50 years, as regional temperatures have warmed, the growth of bristlecone pine trees at high altitudes has been accelerating, whereas that of trees lower down the slopes has not, according to the results of a study published November 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . [More]

Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace's collection unveiled for the 150th anniversary of Darwin's Origin of Species

Charles Darwin had been mulling over his observations of and theories about natural selection for years, but what finally prompted him to write On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (published November 24, 1859) was the arrival of a letter from fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 to 1913) on the very same subject. This fateful 1858 letter, Darwin noted in communication with geologist Charles Lyell, was a most "striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract." [More]

New Slashdot 

The Technology Behind Last.fm

CNET's Crave has up a detailed interview with Last.fm's Matthew Ogle, the company's head of Web development. Reader CNETNate notes that Last.fm has streamed 275,000 years of audio around the world. From the interview: "We stream all music directly off our servers in London. We have a cluster of streaming nodes including a bunch of powerful machines with solid-state hard drives. We have a process that runs daily which finds the hottest music and pushes those tracks on to the SSDs streamers that sit in front of our regular platter-based streaming machines. That way, if someone is listening to one of our more popular stations, the chances are really good that these songs are coming off our high-speed SSD machines. They're fast because every song is sitting in memory instead of being on a slow, spinning platter." The interview is actually on two pages but pretends it's on three. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Air Cannon Ties Pirates In Knots

Hugh Pickens writes "Numerous high-tech devices have been proposed to help ships cope with piracy on the high seas. Now a company has developed a ship-borne launching device that fires a net or coiled rope into the path of pirate vessels using compressed air with a range of up to a range of 400m. The payload net or rope, which has a parachute attached to the end, will unravel and lay out across the surface of the water so that as the pirate boat travels through the water its propeller shaft will pick up the line and become entangled. 'With the trials and testing we've done, it has taken us some 45 minutes to cut and disentangle the line from the propeller itself,' says Jonathan Delf. 'Within that time of course, the target ship is on its way and hopefully help has arrived in the form of naval forces or helicopter support.' The system can be fired up to five times off just a cylinder of air like a simple scuba tank." The video mentions that the device can also fire a payload of golf balls. The systems have recently be sold to "several large shipping companies that travel near the oil-rich Nigerian Delta, which, like the Somalian coast, is rife with piracy." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Where the Global Warming Data Is

Several readers noted the latest fallout from the Climate Research Unit's Climategate: the admission by the University of East Anglia that the raw data behind important climate research was discarded in the 1980s, "a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue" according to the Times (UK) article. The Telegraph quotes Phil Jones, beleagured head of the CRU: "Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them." Some of the data behind these other results can likely be found in a new resource that jamie located up at the Real Climate site: a compilation of links to a wide variety of raw data about climate. From the former link: "In the aftermath of the CRU email hack, many people have come to believe that scientists are unfairly restricting access to the raw data relating to the global rise in temperature. ... We have set up a page of data links to sources of temperature and other climate data, codes to process it, model outputs, model codes, reconstructions, paleo-records, the codes involved in reconstructions etc." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chrome OS Presents and Futures

Many readers are submitting stories related to Google Chrome OS. ruphus13 points out a GigaOm opinion piece about how, if users end up rejecting its current cloud-only focus, the nacent OS may succeed as a netbook secondary operating system alongside Windows (in company with secondaries based on other Linux flavors, including Android). Engadget reviews a Chrome OS on a USB key setup that is claimed to offer eye-opening performance compared to running under virtualization. And an anonymous reader notes the 0.1 beta release of ChromeShell, which installs a "Chrome OS-like" environment that boots to the Chrome browser in ~3 seconds; users can switch to Windows later as desired. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

G-WAN, Another Free Web Server

mssmss writes "Has anyone used G-WAN — a free (as in beer), supposedly fast and scalable Web server? The downside is it supports only C scripts, which the author claims is a plus since most programmers know C anyway. There is currently only a Windows release and no clear answer in their FAQs whether there would be Linux/Solaris releases. As an interesting aside, releasing a Web server while at the same time fighting a losing battle (PDF) with a large bank over a piracy claim of $200 million (the bank is alleged to have done the piracy) is quite a feat." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Network Security While Traveling?

truesaer writes "I'll be spending all of next year backpacking through South America. In the past I've used Internet cafes while away, but this time I plan to bring a netbook and rely primarily on Wi-Fi hotspots. I'll be facing the same issues and risks that business travelers in hotels and airports face, as well as those encountered by millions of other backpackers, gap-year travelers, and students. Since my trip is so long I'll have no choice but to access my banking, credit card, and investment accounts on public networks. I will not have a system at home to connect through. Other than an effective firewall, a patched system, and the use of SSL, what else should I do to protect my information? Keep in mind that many places have very poor bandwidth and latency." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

German President Refuses To Sign Censorship Law

thetinytoon writes "German federal president Horst Köhler has refused to sign a law to block child pornography that passed Parlament earlier this year, stating that he 'needs more information.' In Germany, the federal president has the right to reject a law only if its passage violated the order mandated by the constitution, or if it is obviously unconstitutional — he can't veto a law simply because he disagrees with it. The law was passed under a coalition government, but a different coalition took power before the law reached the president's desk. Political observers guess that the political parties would like to get rid of the law without losing face, but since it has already passed the Parlament, they can't simply abandon it." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Archos Releases Dev Edition Firmware For Tablets

Charbax writes "While Archos' current 'Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android' is a 4.8" WVGA tablet that runs Android 1.5 (and perhaps 2.0 soon with the full Google Marketplace Experience), users of last year's 4.8" and 7" Archos Linux tablets have been complaining that Archos' firmware updates to its proprietary, embedded Linux OS were too infrequent, and added too little of the requested functionality. Under pressure from hackers demonstrating jailbreak methods, Archos has just now officially released (PDF) the open-source Special Developer Edition firmware based on Angstrom Linux, generated from a customized, open embedded build for last year's Archos 5 and 7 Internet Media tablets. If many talented developers join the community of Archos hackers to make software for this new Archos SDE firmware, then Android, Angstrom Linux, Maemo Mer, Qt and Ubuntu Linux could be expected to run smoothly on it soon. That could make it the ultimate pocket Linux Internet tablet for Linux hackers. Installing Archos' new SDE firmware permanently disables DRM playback and voids the warranty." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA Campaigns For Safer Launch Requirements

NASA officials will speak before members of Congress this week in an effort to gain support for more stringent launch safety considerations for the space shuttle's successor. Crew safety remains a major concern for lawmakers while they debate NASA's future and the potential integration of private companies into US space flight plans. "The demonstrated probability of a shuttle launch disaster is 1 in 129. NASA's 83 astronauts think those odds can be improved to 1 in 1,000. Independent safety experts agree. 'None of us want to repeat the accident history of the shuttle,' said retired Navy Vice Adm. Joseph Dyer, chairman of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a group organized to oversee NASA programs after three astronauts died in the 1967 Apollo 1 launch pad fire. ... NASA's Astronaut Office began a re-evaluation of next-generation launch vehicle safety after the loss of Columbia's crew. The guiding principles laid out in a May 2004 report remain current, astronauts said. Launching astronauts into low Earth orbit is dangerous. But an order-of-magnitude reduction of risk is achievable 'and should therefore represent a minimum safety benchmark for future systems,' the report says." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google-Microsoft Crossfire Will Hit Consumers

theodp writes "Newsweek's Dan Lyons doesn't know who will be the winner in Google and Microsoft's search battle, but that's not stopping him from picking a loser — consumers. As we head towards a world where some devices may be free or really cheap, consumers should prepare to be bombarded by ads or pay a premium to escape them. 'The sad truth is that Google and Microsoft care less about making cool products than they do about hurting each other,' concludes Lyons. 'Their fighting has little to do with helping customers and a lot to do with helping themselves to a bigger slice of the money we all spend to buy computers and surf the Internet. Microsoft wants to ruin Google's search business. Google wants to ruin Microsoft's OS business. At the end of the day, they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Record-Breaking Black Friday For eBay's PayPal

adeelarshad82 writes "eBay's PayPal division reported that PayPal processed 20 percent more transactions on Black Friday compared to last year. PayPal didn't release the total payment volume, but claimed that its Payflow Gateway system processes nearly a quarter of e-commerce, while its direct sales numbers reflect 12 percent of all e-commerce. In general, reports from a number of e-tailers and retailers indicated that consumers spent more on Black Friday than in 2008, when the United States was in the midst of a recession. However, it's still unclear whether shoppers bought more on Black Friday, when they could expect a discount on what usually is one of the busiest days in the holiday season, or whether the pattern will continue. In 2008, shoppers stopped buying in early December, a shock that the US economy felt well into 2009." How did your Black Friday turn out? Did you wait in endless lines and contribute to the trampling deaths of fellow shoppers, sit at home and help take down your favorite online retailer's servers, or eschew the process altogether? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Eliminates Gizmo5 Client For Linux

cuttheredwire writes "Evidence on the Gizmo5 forum (login required) confirms that since Google's takeover of Gizmo5, only the Windows, Mac, and iPhone clients are available for download from the official Web page. The Linux download link no longer works. This is a potential problem for happy Linux users with paid-up credit in their Gizmo5 accounts if they need to reinstall the software. A back-door download is still available, although it is speculated on the forums that it will go away soon. Does this mean that (as with other Google projects such as Google Talk) Linux will be the poor relation for Google Voice also?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Do You Hate Being Called an "IT Guy?"

An anonymous reader writes "The phrase 'IT' is so overused, I'm not sure what it means any more. OK, maybe it's an ego thing, but I spent a lot of years in grad school, lots of years getting good at creating software, and lots of years getting good at creating technical products and I don't want the same label as the intern who fixes windoze. I'm looking at a tech management job at a content company that is trying to become a software company, and they refer to everything about software development, data center operations, and desktop support as 'IT.' I'd like to tell the CEO before I take the job that we have to stop referring to all these people as 'IT people' or I'm not going to be able to attract and retain the top-tier talent that is required. Am I just being petty? Should I just forget it? Change it slowly over time? These folks are really developing products, but we don't normally call software creators 'product developers.' Just call them the 'Tech Department' or the 'Engineering Deptartment?'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iPhone App Store Rejects Find a New Home

eldavojohn writes "A new site called App Rejections (somewhat slashdotted already) aims to provide a home for misfit apps. With Apple offering no documents or discussions on the matter of application rejections, this site might become a popular place to pick forbidden fruit. Could a third party horn in on Apple's monopoly in the iPhone application market?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights

An anonymous reader sends in this link to a video of 12-1/2 minutes of Space Shuttle pr0n. The people at the Johnson Space Center put together this video of the ascent of STS-129 using multiple imagery assets — ground, air, booster, and the shuttle itself. The booster's-eye view of splashdown and immersion is something you don't see every day. As a bonus, another anonymous reader shared a beautiful photo of the shuttle flying over rugged terrain after it separated from the ISS last week. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New SquidooCool Blog 

RIP Squidoo Groups

The $2000 Lens Challenge

#1 Most Important Thing… About Guestbooks

Pinging Your Lenses

New Squidoo Job – More Money For Lensmasters $