Picture of the Day 7/31: What is this?If you know what this is and where it's located, you could win a prize in the CNET Road Trip Picture of the Day challenge.
Top-rated reviews of the week (photos)Here are a few of CNET Reviews' favorite items from the past week, including the 2011 BMW 535i, the Sony BDV-E770W home theater system, and the Apple Magic Trackpad.
Baseball Hall of Fame plaques (photos)Road Trip 2010: CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman calls out his selections as the best cross-sections of players in history.
Today’s Demonstration: How to Hack an ATM—With Video! | DiscoblogAlthough money may not grow on trees, it can spew from an ATM–at least if you’re computer security expert Barnaby Jack. He demonstrated recently at a security conference in Las Vegas how to get an ATM to spit money for minutes on end. Jack purchased the ATMs online, and says the tools required to hack [...]
We Can Rebuild You: 8 Ways Science Can Fix Your (or Your Cat’s) Broken Body | Science Not FictionStar Wars, A.I., The Six Million Dollar Man, Star Trek and a host of other science-fiction films all share a particular futurist’s dream: a broken body is repaired with an artificial replacements. Reality is finally catching up with our imaginations. Stem cells, mind-controlled arms, osso-integrated prostheses, exoskeletons, and xenotransplants are here. It’s important to [...]
Are Eyes From Flies the Future of Solar Technology? | DiscoblogScientists are eyeing the future of solar technology–specifically, fly eyes. Turns out those bubbly-looking spectators might be just the ticket to more-efficient solar cells, researchers from Penn State University say.
Blowflies have peepers that would help solar panels collect light more efficiently, and creating these fly-eye molds was a feat in itself, according to Discovery News. [...]
New Glucose Monitor Keeps Tabs on Diabetics From Inside | 80beatsA new device may one day save those with diabetes from the frequent finger-pricking and cumbersome external monitors required to check glucose levels–by instead keeping tabs from inside their torsos. In a study published online today in Science Translational Medicine, researchers report that an implantable glucose sensor has worked in pigs. Ultimately, clinical trials and [...]
Video: San Francisco’s Buses as the Pulse of the City | DiscoblogSure, public transportation is cheaper, better for the environment, and conducive to livable cities. But today we’ll celebrate another of its fabulous features: It can be visually awesome. Case in point: A visualization of the movement of the San Francisco Municipal Railway, also known as Muni. The video is based on June 2010 data harvested [...]
Toshiba’s Ultra-Long-Lasting Battery May Be in Cars as Early as Next Year | 80beatsIs this battery the one? Toshiba’s Super-Charge Ion Batteries, which reportedly lose hardly any capacity after thousands of charges, could be coming to cars next year.
As Slashdot noted today, this battery technology has been a long time coming. In 2007 Toshiba announced the creation of the SCiB, and unveiled the prototype the next year. It [...]
Gvmt Makes It Legal to JailBreak iPhones, Takes Other Steps to Limit Copyrights | 80beatsEvery three years the Librarian of Congress reviews the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and James H. Billington’s review just expanded digital freedom with this year’s ruling of new exemptions to the copyright law.
Jailbreak that iPhone
First and foremost, Billington ruled that it’s not against the law to jailbreak a phone (the practice of working around [...]
Why Keep Your Body? Help Yourself to Big Muscles, Cyborg Limbs, and a Big Booty | Science Not FictionColonel Quaritch and his exoskeleton from Avatar
Science fiction is sometimes a playground to explore what it would be like to have a different body. Most recently, in Avatar and Iron Man 2 we saw people joined to exoskeletons, which are being developed in real life for the military and for rehabilitation. The biomechanics of these [...]
Couple Charged With Stealing General Motor’s Hybrid Secrets | 80beatsA lucrative new car market, a former General Motors employee, and a dumpster with shredded documents. According to a federal court indictment (pdf) released on Thursday, these may be a recipe for hybrid car espionage. A former GM employee and her husband–Shanshan Du and Yu Qin–stand accused of shuttling secrets out of the American automobile [...]