This app allows you to write your notes using your finger, instead of using the onscreen keyboard.
Note Taker Turns Your iPhone into an Endless Notepad – Note Taking – Lifehacker.
Note Taker
1
Airbags for helicopters
NASA has dropped a small helicopter from a 240 ft high gantry, resulting in a 54mph crash at a 33 degree angle, a fairly hefty crash. Using a honeycomb structure that stays flat and tilts outwards when needed, the landing skids were bent outwards, but the crash test dummies inside did pretty good.
NASA helicopter crash tests flying airbag | NetworkWorld.com Community.
Name a Star – Or a Galaxy!
So… you want to be immortal… you want a celestial body named after you. What next? Unfortunately, the one body that does officially name stars and galaxies – the IAU – won’t let you put your name on one (their regulations are here). Or on a comet or asteroid either.
Fortunately there are plenty of options available for you. Some are less ‘valid’ than others, but none of them is really more than a novelty.
Commercial novelties
These companies basically put you in their own privately held catalogue and send you nice certificates.
Nice ones I’ve found are:
Name a Star Live. They’re cool because they let you use the SLOOH observatory to look at your own star.
The International Star Registry is nice because it’s been featured in loads of magazines and has several notable customers, including Nicole Kidman.
Free Star Naming
These are free but will charge you extra for not having a banner on the certificate you print yourself, having a nice looking bezel for the certificate, etc etc etc.
Free name a star is like this.
Scientific organisations
The Pale Blue Dot Project is cheap (only $10), plugs into the Google Sky addon and you can select your own star from a limited number that will be scanned for planets by the Kepler satellite.
The Stardome Observatory and the Sydney Observatory both also fund the observatory and are placed in their own catalogues. Unfotunately they only give you stars visible on the southern side of the globe.
BUT WHY STOP THERE?! BUY A GALAXY!
NameAGalaxy.com allows you to name a galaxy for free and download a certificate.
The Windowpane Observatory in Arizona gives you a star map as well – as telescope time . Galaxies are visible using the naked eye!
OR… The Moon awaits!
The Lunar Embassy thought this one up. No, you can’t enforce it, but it makes a nice certificate. They’re also offering land on Mars or Venus and it starts at GBP 16.75 but you can’t pick the location.
Now naming an asteroid…
Now these are different. The discoverer can apply for a name, which is then looked at by the allmighty IAU to whittle off living politicians, offensive people, unpronouncable names, etc. and then the name is awarded. Of course after 10 years, it becomes fair game, and a concentrated email campaign will help push the IAU over the edge and name it the way you like. see the Space.com article.
As for comets
The guidelines are pretty strict here – it goes to the discoverer(s), unless it’s discovered by a huge amount of people, in which case it gets a generic name. The guidelines of the IAU are here.
Finally, a word for solar systems
Nope. Neither for NEO’s (Near Earth Objects). Space.com has a good article on the naming conventions here if you’re really interested.
Pot makes you smart
A synthetic chemical similar to the active ingredient in marijuana makes new cells grow in rat brains. What is more, in rats this cell growth appears to be linked with reducing anxiety and depression. The results suggest that marijuana, or its derivatives, could actually be good for the brain.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8155
Israel’s biometric database – haven’t they learned anything?
You’d have thought that Isreal of all countries would have learned of the problems involved in having too much useless information in a centralised database from the Dutch in WWII – which had ethnic information such as: “are you jewish?” in there, enabling the Germans to export the most jews per capita from the Netherlands. But no – they want a compulsory database of every citizen in Israel containing two fingerprints and a picture. Idiots.
Israel tests biometric database • The Register.
Live Ships Map – AIS – Vessel Traffic and Positions
This map is updated frequently and shows you a live map of many many marine objects and their headings
Live Ships Map – AIS – Vessel Traffic and Positions.
Woman arrested for piracy – 3 minutes of tape
After taping a birthday party, a woman managed to get 3 whole minutes of Twiligh New Moon footage on her tape, was arrested and is now facing up to 3 years of jail time!
Copyright cops going nuts…
Fraunhofer cracks Bitlocker
The Fraunhofer institute has found a way to crack Bitlocker, which is the Windows Vista drive encryption mechanism.
Booting from a USB stick allows you to replace the bootscreen with a fake bitlocker bootscreenafter which the PIN is stored on the harddisk for later retreival by booting with a Linux USB stick afterwards.
Fraunhofer SIT – Security Test Lab – Bitlocker_Video.
Fraunhofer cracks Bitlocker
The Fraunhofer institute has found a way to crack Bitlocker, which is the Windows Vista drive encryption mechanism.
Booting from a USB stick allows you to replace the bootscreen with a fake bitlocker bootscreenafter which the PIN is stored on the harddisk for later retreival by booting with a Linux USB stick afterwards.
Fraunhofer SIT – Security Test Lab – Bitlocker_Video.
SpaceShipTwo: ‘Enterprise’ unveiled
Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites has unveiled the Virgin Galactic sponsored Spaceship two, the ship that will bring commercial space travellers into space at reasonably affordable prices.
Recon Instruments HUD Goggles
These goggles will have a heads up display in them where you can see call info, speed, hight, timing information, rate of descent, a moving map and be able to find friends. Hopefully out in 2010 and they’re going for reasonable prices too!
Should be awesome for the gadget conscious snowboarder or skier!
Solar Impulse Completes First Flight
The solar impulse is a completely solar powered aeroplane. The flight was a short one – 350m at an elevation of 1m, but it proved the concept!
Solar Impulse Completes First Flight | Autopia | Wired.com.
Capturing lightning
Stonebridge engineering has found a way to capture lightning within 3D polymers. The’re fractals and they look awesome!
Technical description about how our Lichtenberg Figure Sculptures (or beam trees) are created.
All men watch porn
Prof Lajeunesse interviewed 20 heterosexual male university students who consumed pornography, and found on average, they first watched pornography when they were 10 years old.
Around 90 per cent of consumption was on the internet, while 10 per cent of material came from video stores.
Single men watched pornography for an average of 40 minutes, three times a week, while those in relationships watched it 1.7 times a week for around 20 minutes.
The study found that men watched pornography that matched their own image of sexuality, and quickly discarded material they found offensive or distasteful.
Prof Lajeunesse said pornography did not have a negative effect on men’s sexuality.
“Not one subject had a pathological sexuality,” he said. “In fact, all of their sexual practices were quite conventional.
“Pornography hasn’t changed their perception of women or their relationship, which they all want to be as harmonious and fulfilling as possible,” he added.
via All men watch porn, scientists find – Telegraph.
Sprint Makes Goverment Tracking of GPS Data Easy
If you have a cellphone, it turns out that Sprint keeps 24 months of your location data and turns it over to law enforcement regularly. 8 million requests were made over the last year. Requests can be made every 3 minutes for up to 60 days.
Sprint isn’t the only one who tracks this data: Yahoo and Verizon are also culprits but they’re not disclosing the amount of times they’ve given away this kind of data to the government.
Yup, they know where you are and where you’ve been. It’s a brave new world indeed!
Sprint Makes Goverment Tracking of GPS Data Easy – PC World.
Electromagnetic fields as cutting tools
Using electromagnetic pulses, researchers have found a way to impact steel at around 3500 bar allowing holes to be cut in hard steel in 200ms, around 7 times faster than a laser can.
Electromagnetic fields as cutting tools.
Developing desktop applications by using web technologies
Using Titanium you can develop desktop, android or iphone applications using your favorite web technology, such as PHP, HTML or Javascript.
Developing desktop applications by using web technologies – ThinkPHP /dev/blog.
SHARKOON USB Lanport
This connects a number of USB drives to your network, basically turning them into a NAS.
The Future is Here! Vat-grown meat!
SCIENTISTS have grown meat in the laboratory for the first time. Experts in Holland used cells from a live pig to replicate growth in a petri dish.
The advent of so-called “in-vitro” or cultured meat could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals — if people are willing to eat it.
So far the scientists have not tasted it, but they believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time.
They initially extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig. Called myoblasts, these cells are programmed to grow into muscle and repair damage in animals.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6936352.ece
US gets EU Swift data
All your banking details will be given to the Americans, who can then also pass it on to third parties as they so wish. The EU will not be able to sift through US banking data. Why the EU gave away our private data is a totaly mystery. Privacy rights? Whatever.
EU to approve more banking data for US spooks • The Register.
Chairman Mao’s Underground Bunker Paradise
In 1969, Chairman Mao commanded the construction of a second Beijing beneath the surface of the original city, designed to accommodate all six million of its then inhabitants, so that if nuclear war did kick off, folk would still have somewhere to hang out and play Mah Jong while the rest of us burnt to death in a shower of atomic rain. War never came, but the city is still there.
http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/11/chairman-maos-underground-city/
Evidence of life on Mars
The Allan Hills 84001 Meteorite which landed on earth has been examined and they’ve discovered that the tiny magnetite crystals it contains are chemically consistent with being formed in bacteria – they’re basically little fossils. They’re pretty sure the rock, which has floated around for around 16 million years, comes from Mars as it matches chemical compositions with the relative proportions of various gases measured in observations of the atmosphere of Mars made by the Viking spacecraft in the 1970s.
Evidence of life on Mars lurks beneath surface of meteorite, Nasa experts claim – Times Online.
Dutch KM system doesn’t invade privacy?!
The Dutch have a crazy plan to charge people per km they drive. How will they monitor this? By placing little black GPS boxes in every car. If you don’t have a working box in your car, you will face up to four (!) years in jail – more than most other forms of crime.
Now the economics minister is saying that the ideas of an invasion of privacy are indian stories and nonsense. I ask, how much more can you invade someone’s privacy than following someone’s car everywhere (s)he goes and putting all that information in a huge database?!
EZ: privacybezwaar km-heffing is indianenverhaal (video) | Webwereld.
5ubox iPhone Theme page
This page is fantastic! Loads of themes easily browseable and best of all, you can download them directly 🙂
The National Collection of Aerial Photography
This site has huge archives of declassified aerial reconnaissance photographs from the second world war.
The National Collection of Aerial Photography.