Extremely important research is being done in Australia right now, and it’s yielding extremely important results: octopi are officially more technically discerning than about 1/5th of the American public.
Scientists are working in a new brain-implanted sex stimulation chip that will make you even more horny than what you already are. Apparently, according to Oxford University researcher Professor Aziz, it was discovered by accident:
Transmissive and reflective illumination? Is this somehow exciting? Although they’ve done their best to make it sound boring, LG is onto something pretty significant here: a display that suits use indoors and out.
Self-published authors are now distributing books in self-contained iPhone apps, but when a friend of ours submitted his for approval, he got blackballed for content that was either “obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory.” NSFW pic:
The Gadget: Australian company Life!’s leather iPhone charging case. More »
According to Reuters, Warner Music Group has ordered YouTube to pull down all music videos by its artists, which could affect hundreds of thousands of videos. The reason? Money (what else could it be?). Apparently Warner aren’t exactly impressed by the paltry return they’re getting from the video site, a site they believe they helped build when they agreed to share their music video content before Google dropped billions of dollars buying them out.
Scientists in the UK have eliminated an altered gene known to cause breast cancer from an unborn baby, according to the BBC.
The science behind the technique isn’t exactly new – it’s been used to screen for Cystic Fibrosis for years in the UK, but this is the first time its been used to prevent cancer. It involves screening for affected genes while the baby is still in the 8-cell embryonic stage, when it’s about 3 days old. Without the treatment, any female descendants of the family in question would have a 50-80% chance of developing breast cancer in their 20s.
Scientists have been careful not to claim this is a cure for breast cancer – there are other causes for the disease other than this one altered gene – but what this really does is open the door for designer babies. After all, if you can remove a bad gene from a child at the embryonic stages, you should be able to add different genes (like giving your child blond hair and blue eyes, for example) as well. And from there it’s only a matter of time before we’re subjected to an entire race of Children of the Corn, isn’t it?
After you watch this stop-action film of a Lego Millenium Falcon construction by Paul Romein and Greg Radzimowsky, close your eyes and imagine what your life would be like without the Internet. For a start, you would never have had the opportunity to watch this little film. In fact, Paul and Greg probably wouldn’t have even bothered to make it, instead opting to just make the Lego starship and run around the area pretending to fly it without a camera. There’d also be no Gizmodo, which would mean I’d probably be unemployed, spending my days thinking about making a stop action Lego movie myself, but for the fact that without the Internet, I’d have no real way to share it with the world. And in the end, that’s what really makes the Internet so awesome, isn’t it?
There’s more to playing football in college than a potential NFL contract and a sound education—there’s stacks of free gear and gadgets to be had too!
