Entertainment
The 20 Best Biographies for Tech-Minded Students
E-mail Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone.
Some mad genius went and created a perfect working 12-inch tall Star Wars coin-op arcade game cabinet. Just click the video embed in that forum thread to see and marvel.
News
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is a controversial surveillance bill that proposes broad legal exemptions for the U.S. government and private companies to share "cyber threat intelligence" that go well beyond the FISA Amendments Act which legalized the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.
The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK ISPs, court rules
Reading & Discussion
Bit rot: The world is losing its ability to reconstruct history. Better regulation could fix that
How a console firmware update could make a small dent in our energy problem
The origin of the Blink tag
Shakespeare: All the web is a stage
Science
Digital Aeronautical Charts
Scientists have claimed they’ve created a small crystal that works like a quantum computer. Said computer is so powerful (by whatever measure they’re using) that you’d need a contemporary silicon computer the size of the universe to match it. It’s just as well we have the crystal one. Crystals are cool and I barely have enough room to keep my stuff out of the rain as it is.
"We measure, in a single experiment, both the radiation pressure and the torque due to a wide variety of propagating acoustic vortex beams. The results validate, for the first time directly, the theoretically predicted ratio of the orbital angular momentum to linear momentum in a propagating beam. We experimentally determine this ratio using simultaneous measurements of both the levitation force and the torque on an acoustic absorber exerted by a broad range of helical ultrasonic beams produced by a 1000-element matrix transducer array." In other words, science has created the sonic screwdriver, and it could mean new advances in non-invasive surgery. The official release from the University of Dundee, plus a couple of videos. Still doesn't work on wood.
Writing in the New York Review of Books, Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg discusses his reason for suspecting that advances in particle physics and astronomy will not just slow down in the coming years, but cease entirely.
Technology
It is well known that the US military and their allies use unmanned aerial drones overseas in wars and other operations. But there are also hundreds in operation here in the U.S., according to records the Federal Aviation Administration has recently released. Local police departments already have used them in SWAT situations, and the Department of Homeland Security has given the green light for them to deploy a drone helicopter that can supposedly taze suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchersas well as providing surveillance. Congress has paved the way for as many as 30,000 drones in the skies over the US by 2020, which has privacy advocates alarmed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a map with all of the organizations that have permits to use drones within the confines of the US.
Tutorials
100 Serious Twitter Tips for Academics
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