You may have noticed the widely reported story that a team of German scientists have managed to make photons exceed the speed of light in the course of an experiment. Well, let’s just say that’s probably not exactly what happened. [Engadget]
Category Archives: Blog
China embraces the digital novel
Opinions are divided among Western authors and publishers as to whether free fiction available online boosts or damages the sales of physical product – witness Pixel-stained Technopeasantry. Wired reports that the book business in China is in fact undergoing a renaissance thanks to the increasingly popular pastime of reading novels online, and that the stories go on to be used in other media like television and computer games. The question is, will the same model work in the West?
$100 desktop, and green too!
Forget the $100 laptop, here’s the $100 desktop, and it uses four times fewer chemicals and fossil fuels during manufacturing. It stores everything on a flash card, and uses networking to keep permanent files. Worldchanging has the scoop.
Lo-fi high-tech – scrapheap 3D printer from Russia
3D printing, fabbing, rapid prototyping … call it what you will, it’s a pricey cutting edge technology, right? Well, not necessarily – Bruce Sterling has spotted this Russian-made 3D printer built from lab junk. Looks like a similar idea to the Rep-Rap project.
Microfluidics – chemical electronics?
Wired has a report on the growing field of microfluidics – tiny devices that can sort and manipulate tiny droplets of liquid in ways analogous to electronic logic circuits, which have the potential to accelerate pharmacological research and the development of new medical treatments. [Image ganked from website of RainDance Technologies – please contact for take-down if required.]
Drugs aren’t just used for curing disease, though – one can only imagine the sort of illicit recreational substances that this technology will create once it becomes more common, and it will surely speed us toward the time when sports prowess is as much to do with the chemical augmentation of the participants as any inborn skill.