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An anonymous reader writes
"In Belfast a High Court judge has ordered a 13 year old to surrender his Xbox to the authorities. The boy was charged with a series of robberies and in the bail application the judge asked the boy what he owned that meant a lot to him. The teenager said it was his Xbox games system. The judge told the youth that the surrender of the Xbox would show him what it was like to have something he really valued taken from him."
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An anonymous reader writes
"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's former Harvard classmates Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, who accuse him of stealing their idea for the social network, have decided not to appeal to the Supreme Court. In a filing today with the federal court in San Francisco, the duo said that after 'careful consideration,' they decided not to seek Supreme Court review of the $65 million settlement."
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cylonlover writes
"Researchers have managed to create a proof of concept Smell-o-Vision device potentially capable of pumping out thousands of different odors, yet small enough to fit behind a TV. The device has 200 X-axis controllers and 100 on the Y-axis that could selectively activate each of the 10,000 possible odors stored within numerous non-flammable silicone elastomer compartments."
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DeviceGuru writes
"Not content with revealing the source code to his mom's banana bread, two-time BattleBots champion Christian Carlberg has developed an open source flashlight. Carlberg first achieved notoriety shredding competitors' robots with Minion's 14-inch saw blade on BattleBots. Now he's all fired up to begin shipping what they say could be the 'world's first open source flashlight.' But why in the world would you want a reprogrammable flashlight?"
20199852
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mikejuk writes
"You may well have seen many simulations of sorting algorithms that aim to show how the algorithm works. However I guarantee that you have never seen anything quite in the same league as the videos made by Sapientia University — they are simply crazy but in the nicest possible way. They folk dance their way though bubble sort, shell sort, insertion sort and selection sort. Very, very weird but you find you can't but help checking that they are doing it right. Now anyone want to try quicksort?"
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anymouse writes
"What should you do when you really, REALLY have to 'go'? Make important life decisions, maybe. Controlling your bladder makes you better at controlling yourself when making decisions about your future, too, according to a study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science."
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alphadogg writes
"Ninety-eight percent of US residents would have access to high-speed mobile broadband service within five years under a plan that President Barack Obama detailed Thursday. Obama's proposal, which he alluded to in his State of the Union speech last month, would free up 500MHz of wireless spectrum over a decade by offering to share spectrum auction proceeds with current spectrum holders, including television stations, that have unused airwaves. The cost of the proposal is likely to raise questions from lawmakers, and some backers of government broadband spending have already raised concerns that the plan would give money and spectrum to large mobile carriers."
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An anonymous reader writes
"If Popeye had made alternative fuels, he'd have probably come up with something like this. Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a system that converts solar energy directly into hydrogen using the common spinach plant."
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slshwtw writes
"Pope Benedict XVI has recently encouraged priests to blog and promoted Christian Netiquette. Now apparently the Roman Catholic church has sanctioned a 'Confession App,' available through iTunes for $1.99. Apparently it doesn't replace 'traditional,' in-person confession, but walks one through the process, even suggesting sins you may wish to confess."'
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Sonny Yatsen writes
"NPR's Robert Krulwich explores the work of several designers who are working on carnivorous furniture. These creations, include a clock that feeds on dead flies, and a table that lures mice into a guillotined death. 'We want robots to be able to get their own energy from the environment,' says co-designer Prof. Melhuish. Let's hope they come up with a lounge chair that eats cockroaches sometime soon."
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arshadk writes
"Unlike 'ordinary' jetpacks, the JetLev is actually two vehicles, tethered by a hose the thickness of your thigh. On the water is a small speedboat-like unit which contains a 250 horsepower motor and a pump. This is connected to the pack — into which you strap your frail body — by a 10-meter hose. The water is pumped from the sea or lake below up to the nozzles on the jetpack, providing a 1,900-Newton thrust, enough to lift a human weighing up to 150 kilos."
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Zothecula writes
"The quest to build a working 'invisibility cloak' generally focuses on the use of metamaterials – artificially engineered materials with a negative refractive index that have already been used to render microscopic objects invisible in specific wavelengths of light. Now, using naturally occurring crystals rather than metamaterials, two research teams working independently have demonstrated technology that can cloak larger objects in the broad range of wavelengths visible to the human eye. PDFs of the two similarly named research papers are available through arXiv.org."
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Blessed_by_the_Cow writes
"Apparently, Malaysian scientists have released 6,000 genetically modified male mosquitoes into the the wild. These bloodsuckers have been altered to have shorter lifespans. The basic idea behind it is to help slow down the spread of Dengue fever by killing off the mosquitoes faster."
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universegeek writes
"Mathematician Ken Ono, from Emory, has solved a 250-year-old problem: how to exactly and explicitly generate partition numbers. Ono and colleagues were able to finally do this by realizing that the pattern of partition numbers is fractal (PDF). This pattern allowed them to find a finite, algebraic formula, which is like striking oil in mathematics."
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