I discovered this evening that Futurismic had been hacked (thanks to Cory for the notice) and that a number of our pages were pushing malware. I’ve cleared out all the crap and have done what I can to prevent a repeat of the intrusion. If you notice something wrong, please drop us an email, and please accept our apologies in advance for the hassle.

What if the visible universe was just a membrane embedded in a another universe, one that had an extra dimension? There would be thousands of tiny black holes, left over from the Big Bang, floating around in our solar system alone. It’s way beyond my education in science, but this ‘braneworld theory’, a counter to general relativity, is a serious idea being kicked around – serious enough that the Gamma-ray Large Space Telescope being launched next year will be used to look for evidence in support of it.

‘Stealth’ is becoming a popular word again, particularly in the military-tech world. Latest out of the R&D box is a radar system that can see through almost anything, yet that is virtually impossible to detect in action, thanks to some fancy shenanigans with bandwidths and so on. It will also be far better than conventional radar systems at spotting things that are either small or very nearby.

I often wish there was a way to let my computer know how angry I am without having to resort to physical assault. Soon, however, it may be able to detect my discontent from my furrowed brow and evil slitty eyes. A team of top techies are working on a computer system that can decode the emotions of a user by analysing facial expressions in much the same way as humans do instinctively. There may be certain computer-based pastimes where you feel the need to cover the camera, though.

Have you heard of Spanish wi-fi startup FON yet? Well, you’re going to. Their business model revolves around getting people to share their broadband connection with other users, and to this end they are offering to sell new joiners a ‘social’ wi-fi router for just $5. The list of their investors is pretty impressive, but a lot of analysts are saying this will be a non-starter. I guess we’ll have to just wait and see. In the meantime, though, I could use an affordable router…