technology-and-philosophy
Patent Trolling Is Draining the Blood from the Idea Economy, and It's Just Getting Worse
US Patent No. 6,599,460 is barely comprehensible and not even the slightest bit sexy. It has to do with preventing irregularities in a certain kind of injection molding; like, if you were making a cheap, thin drinking cup in a mold from liquid plastic...
It's Official, Hacker Gary McKinnon Isn't Coming to America
After a decade of hearings and British court appeals per Gary Mckinnon's extradition to the United States to be tried for the biggest military hacking incident the U.S. Justice Department had ever seen.
It's a Great Struggle to Electrify the Cars of the Future
Electric cars just took another very public hit. Or rather, their batteries did. A123 Systems, a poorly-named advanced battery manufacturer has defaulted on its $249 worth of government loans and declared bankruptcy. A123 made the batteries that go...
Home Automation Is Still Coming, If You Can Afford It
Smartphones and a host of tiny, tiny computers are about to automate your home. So sayeth the futurists, and so sayeth the profit-seeking siliconed youth. And, most recently, so sayeth the founders of Ube, a startup that thinks that one day, we should...
Motherboard TV: We Talked To Steve Jobs Through A Psychic Medium
It's been exactly a year since California Governor Jerry Brown declared "October 16 to be Steve Jobs Day":http://mashable.com/2011/10/15/steve-jobs-day-california-october-16-stanford/. It apparently was a one year-only holiday, but it still stands as a...
Why Steve Jobs Started the Patent Wars
Steve Jobs loved being first. Throughout his life, he generally had the vision and capacity to make that happen. It’s no surprise then that his fingerprints are all over the brewing patent war, the one that has engulfed tech firms around the world...
Ding, Dong, the Shuttle Is Finally Dead
I know. I can hardly believe it, either. After an impressive 25 flights that spanned an equally impressive 22-year career and 123 _million_ miles; after endless parades and flyovers and misty-eyed rooftop adieus, the hulking Endeavour has "finally made...
How the U.S. Exploits the Myth That Hackers Will Take Down Our Power Grid
Last week, Leon Panetta stoked some fears and drew bloggy jeers when he warned of an incoming "cyber Pearl Harbor." The gloomy song and dance, which we've heard played out so many a time now, made a chorus of hackers' alleged ability to disrupt transit...
The Cultural Significance of Lowriders in America
For fans of music made in the post-"War":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fjq0VBCrNo&noredirect=1 era, lowriders -- the flashy classic cars with tiny wheels, Snoop's 64 Impala -- are the stuff of West Coast rap videos, with the crown of biggest baller...
Whoever Has the Smallest Penis in Denmark Wins a New iPhone
A Danish erotica site (in the fair land of Scandinavia, there is no porn, just -erotica-) is giving everyone something to blog about with its unorthodox new contest — whoever has the smallest penis, wins. SingleSex.dk has put the call out to poorly...
You Should Give Your Friend Shit for Liking Mitt Romney (or Obama) on Facebook
A couple days ago, I wrote a post about the recent phenomenon of liberal Facebookers inexplicably finding out they'd unknowingly 'Liked' Mitt Romney. The post got picked up by Slashdot, which brought over a small flood of readers from a broad...
Your Kids Will Forget They're Wearing Microchip ID Tags With These Hot New Accessories
So a bunch of kids are whining about having to wear radio frequency identification tags at high school. And their parents are all, oh, 'civil liberties are being violated', blah blah blah, 'religious freedoms' something 'Orwellian surveillance'. Things...