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Archive of posts filed under the Science and Technology category.
Topics pertaining to science and technology, current or future.
“Riots, wild markets: Did space storms drive us mad?”
OMG, mind control rays… from the SUN! 😉 Okay, not really. At worst, the solar storms only added some additional impetus, the basic reasons for both the riots and the market fluctuations were already there. But I find it very interesting that research has linked solar storms to pessimism and depression. Our local star may …
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“Security flaw found in feds’ digital radios”
This, my friends, is what happens when you try to design something securely without talking to security experts. I’m surprised that the manufacturer of the radios involved hasn’t sued the security researchers to keep them silent, in the belief that if the researchers don’t tell anybody about the problems, they effectively don’t exist (known derisively …
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“A ‘stone-like’ optical disc that lasts for millennia”
Because in fifty generations, our descendants will really be interested in our everlasting backup copies of Doom and Master of Orion II. 😉
Mac OS Upgrade
Those of you who care about such things might have heard that Apple recently released a new version of it’s desktop OS, 10.7, code-named Lion. It was inevitable that I would upgrade my current system (a mid-2009 model MacBook Pro) eventually, but I wanted to put it off for a while. I’ve talked before about …
“Amazon heralds unstoppable rise of the e-book”
I’ve been reading e-books since about 2001, first on my several Palm machines, and more recently on my iPod Touch. I appreciate their compactness (GoddessJ and I already have to devote an entire spare bedroom to our library), the fact they don’t wear out, that I can read them in the dark, and that (depending …
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“Why Multi-word Phrases Make for More Secure Passwords Than Incomprehensible Gibberish”
I was rather surprised at this assertion, at first. Then I thought about it… there are only about 95 printable characters in the basic seven-bit ASCII character set. A very conservative estimate puts the number of distinct English words at well over 65,000, most of which are many letters long. If you knew that someone’s …
“Tanning Can Cause Cancer, but Not Tanning Could Cause a Lot Worse”
Vitamin D, produced in human skin when it’s bombarded by the ultraviolet rays of the sun, may be the most powerful anticancer agent ever known, and lack of it during a mother’s pregnancy and breastfeeding (and keeping babies shielded from ultraviolet sunlight) could be the cause of most autism: Many researchers now fear that the …
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“Boffins develop method of driving computers insane”
Well, turnabout is fair play. Computers have been driving us crazy for decades already. 😉 And does this mean that we’re ready to create the HAL-9000? 😉 (Really interesting ideas about brain research using neural nets, though I have my doubts that it will be very useful for most things until we understand the brain …
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“Sorry, time travelers, you’re still just fiction”
Oh, come on, guys. You’re obviously not real science fiction fans, if you think that this really proves that both time travel and intergalactic travel are impossible. I can name half a dozen possible ways other than faster-than-light travel for one or both of those: wormholes, temporal rifts, cold sleep, dimensional portals, tachyon communications, and …
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