Professor of anthropology Nick Brooks has announced that he believes it likely that a period of significant global climate change may well have been the trigger for our transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to static community-based lifestyles. The increased aridity would have forced humans to cooperate and coalesce around increasingly scarce resources like water. It will be interesting to see if anyone takes this fascinating insight into the cultural history of our species and tries to spin it as a justification for doing nothing about the current round of climate upheavals.

In the absence of any real Mars missions, it seems to be quite the fashinable thing to just run a simulated one instead. Hot on the heels of Roskosmos and its full-immersion pseudo-mission, the Mars Society is planning to install a huge metal can containing six scientists in the Arctic desert for four months. They may get to skip the lengthy flight to un-Mars and back, but it’ll still be no picnic – the mission is being billed as “hard work, no pay, eternal glory.” Well, where do I sign?

There’s a way to get bugs in Microsoft products patched more than once a month – all you have to do is be a content business that uses their DRM systems. Last week’s release of software that strips the DRM from Windows Media Player files prompted a patch from Redmond within three days. Bruce Schneier points out that it’s a bit cheeky to quickly patch flaws that don’t affect your actual user-base negatively, but insist that they wait a month for solutions to problems that could damage or destroy their hardware. The copyright holder’s profits are more important than your security, you see.

Mobile payment systems are a relatively new scene, and have yet to really blow up despite Paypal’s early adoption. Some businesses can see the potential though – an Australian firm is teaming up with bars and other drinking venues to enable you to buy another person a drink via SMS. The recipient will get a code in the message that they can redeem at the bar for their beverage, which will be accompanied by a multimedia message of the buyer’s choice. The novelty value alone is sure to get some interest, but it looks like the focus is on purchase-data gathering than customer satisfaction.

No, not that sort of wireless (though that will surely follow). Kawasaki HI are getting ready to unveil streetcars that will run on rechargable batteries instead of drawing their juice from overhead cables. The nickel hydride batteries are ‘old tech’, a tried and tested workhorse, meaning that there’s no conceptual vaporware involved in this project to stall its progress. Of course the electricity to recharge it will still have to come from somewhere, but cutting down on urban emissions is still a good step forward.