There’s an article at Popular Science that I find absolutely captivating. It’s about Juan Lozano, a Mexican hobbyist who built his own jetpack from scratch. While the pack’s usefulness is limited by its fuel capacity, there’s a retropulp DIY feel to the story that makes the geek in me smile.

I really hate it when people use their mobile phones in the library, in flagrant disregard for the signage that asks them not to. But maybe soon it won’t be a problem for us, as well as for cinema and theatre-goers, thanks to a special paint that has copper-filled nanotubes suspended in it, that the manufacturor claims will block mobile phone signals.

As the literary world mourns the loss of one of its most unique and strong voices, tributes and remembrances are flooding the web. Henry Jenkins of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program has posted up transcripts of two of her appearances there, one of which is a discussion with fellow SF author Samuel Delany.

I can see why a system like FeedTree would be useful to web publishers who want to reduce the load on their servers, but I have a hard time buying that what users really need is faster RSS. This might be a P2P bridge too far.