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It’s a good day for non-lethal crowd control methods, but a bad day for their intended targets, as the Israeli Army has used the Skunk Bomb for the first time against Palestinian protesters in Naalin. The “bomb” is dispensed via a hose system, and the liquid is supposedly hard to wash off, even after repeated…
I’m not sure how far to read into this, but a Boy Genius reader who uses an iPhone with a non-iPhone data plan sent in a note he or she received from AT&T. It was friendly and definitely not a threat, but it does border on stalkery, with a hint of forboding: Subject: Important information…
Sony Insider is reporting a well-founded rumor that the Vaio team will announce a new notebook tomorrow, a replacement to the super-sweet TZ, now to be called TT. I don’t know if that’s an Audi reference or a boobie reference, but what I do know is that it will likely have wireless-N, Bluetooth and an…
The galaxy of gimmicky karaoke machines was starting to fade before Memorex’s SingStand came along. This baby organically melds mic stand and iPod dock, and at $70 doesn’t even put you into debt to do so. The base is where the brains are—vox effects like reverb plus “Auto Voice Control” for removing original song vocals—along…
Maybe you’ve heard the plans for “clean coal” (aka carbon capture and storage), a technology that collects carbon-dioxide exhaust from formerly high-polluting power plants, condensing and freezing it for storage in depleted natural-gas fields. This month, energy provider Vattenfall fired up the CO2 collection process at a plant in Spremberg (“Call Us ‘Spermberg’ and Die”)…
Swedish designer Peter Thuvander likes yo-yo’s so much that he designed an iPhone charger concept around them. Called the iYo (what else?), the device charges its lithium ion battery cell with an OLPC crank that’s turned using the spinning power of a yo-yo. “The remote control needs only 30 cranks—which is nothing when you yo-yo,”…
The design team Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT) isn’t the first to take the old “face vase” optical illusion seriously, but it may be the first to attempt to create actual portraits in the thin air surrounding pottery. “Heroes of the Invisible” forms the faces of designer/architect Mies van der Rohe and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi,…
Picture this, if you will. It’s a cold winter night a few months from now, and a fierce wind blows frigid air against the windows. Inside, things couldn’t be hotter. You’ve settled down for the evening with a chilled flute of Red Bull energy drink and a steaming Hot Pocket. The scene feels ever so…
I might get my head torn off by The Ballmer for posting this “I’m a PC” bit of trivia today, but the irony is too great to pass up. Turns out that phase two of the “I’m a PC ” advertising counterattack against Apple was… created on a Mac. If Apple was smart, and I…
This automated baby stroller from 4Moms, due out in 2009, has international incident written all over it. The hands-free collapsing trick seen in the video is neat looking, but what happens when Tiny Tim gets strapped in for a morning constitutional and mommy accidentally hits the “fold” button? Well, I’ll tell you what happens. John…
I missed out on the cushy, well-received home activation process enjoyed by pretty much every first gen iPhone user. Instead, I waited in line for my iPhone 3G, waited some more, and then waited some more as the AT&T store employees told us about a hundred times that iTunes was kaput. Eventually, I was sent…
We brought you a shiny stock image of LG’s Viewty successor, the Renoir, back in August, and today we’re bringing you the requisite fingerprint-laden in the wild photos (with watermarks!). They give a more accurate depiction of this puppy’s 8MP monster, complete with Schneider-Kreuznach certified optics, xenon flash and ISO up to 1600. There’s a…
The CERN scientists said the LHC’s big malfunction this weekend was the result of a “faulty electrical connection between two magnets that stopped superconducting, melted and led to a mechanical failure and let the helium out,” but we snarky Internet folk know better. It was performance anxiety! With more than a billion people tuning in…
From the “how the hell did we miss this” department comes word that the U.S. military is hard at work creating “thought helmets” for its soldiers. If fully realized, this mind-interfacing piece of gear would allow for what plebeians would call magic, and Arthur C. Clark would call basic telepathy. The “good” news is the…
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet was one of the first people to get his hands on the most coveted camera on the planet, Canon’s 5D Mark II. He talked to us a bit about the breakneck stills-and-video shoot he put together in just a few hours to see what this camera can really do. You…
In just a few weeks, we can almost guarantee that the wires will be filled with one story again: Wii shortages. It should come as no surprise—Nintendo has redistributed hardware/games like Wii Fit to Europe and elsewhere to avoid the weak dollar. And at the same time, the Wii is still the most sought-after console…
In case you were still worried about the LHC bringing on the biblical apocalypse, you can calm down, because it turns out the Collider is going to be out of commission for a lot longer than previously thought. The “electrical transformer” problem wasn’t the cause of the shutdown at all, and the real problem means…
By Eric Joyner, much of his robotic-themed work is available in fine art prints starting at $225. You can also pick up his recently released book, Robots and Donuts, which features 175 pages of full color art for a more impulse-buy-worthy $23. [Book Preview and Eric Joyner via OpticalPoptitude]
Today’s woot! is a factory-refurbished 500GB Seagate Barracuda hard drive, running at 7200 rpm with a 16MB buffer, for only $50. I know, I know, refurbs are risky, but for a backup drive you only use every once in awhile, this is a great price and should do you just fine. [woot!]
The fine addicts over at Crackberry got themselves a pre-release BlackBerry Javelin, and found it to be a worthy follow-up to the Curve, as well as having advantages even over the schmancy-pants Bold. The Javelin is not only the smallest of the three, which feels great in the hand and the pocket, but also boasts…
