It’s pretty hard to spend any time on the web without stumbling across people mentioning open source software. Somewhat less frequent are mentions of open source hardware, but it may be that the Neuros OSD is one of the first of many. Neuros are selling ‘beta’ versions of their Linux-based digital media units, and offering cash bounties to the first people to successfully hack new features and utilities into them. The advocates would have us believe that this is how all hardware development will be done some day, but will the average consumer ever trust code and devices that have been made by ‘hobbyists and hackers’?

As a wage slave, I’m not immune to concern about the potential threat to my livelihood presented by skilled but inexpensive workers in emerging economies like India and China. The Economist points out that I need not be so concerned: emerging economies mean emerging middle classes and an unprecedented increase in global demand, which is a kind of global argument that rising tides lift all boats. So long as those rising tides are metaphorical and not literal, I’m on board with the idea.

The ancient oriental board game Go is a thousand years older than chess, and is the focus of a number of artificial intellignece programmers for a number of reasons: it has an immense number of potential moves and outcomes; it is much harder to assess the outcome of a game from observing the state of the board halfway through; and a computer has never beaten a human master of the game. But they’re getting better all the time – especially a machine known as Crazy Stone that uses ‘Monte Carlo method’ algorithms to learn the most effective moves.

Sure, your country has civic CCTV systems to prevent crimes and help prosecute the people who commit them. But us lucky Brits, well, we’ve got one up on all of you for a change. You see, now we have CCTV systems that can shout at you when you are spotted commiting an act of disobedience. I feel safer already!

It’s nice to get some good news on the environmental front every once in a while – so I was pleased to see Worldchanging mention a report that says renewable energy sources are becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels in the United States. As with all changes though, there are consequences to consider. Futurismic’s columnist Jamais Cascio is also pleased to see renewables taking up the strain, but warns that we should consider the potential consequences of a reduced demand for oil in the politically unstable OPEC nations.