Hackaday has a piece about an upcoming Discovery Channel show called "Prototype this!" It's due in October, and since it's about making and modding robots and other gizmos, it sounds like a Mythbusters-meets-Makerfaire geeky heaven. [Hackaday]

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To find out if dogs are really homing snackycakes for bloodthirsty sharks, or if poking them in the eye with a pokey thing is actually a good idea, you could ask a dude in a lab coat, or like, watch Jaws. Unless you're the Mythbusters--then you build a robot dog, surround it with doggy blood, piss and shit and dump it in shark-infested waters. And a 16-foot ROBOT SHARK. With serrated metal teeth and the same pound-for-bone-crunching-pound bite as a great white. But! If you stab it in the eye, you can make it stop killing you (I guess that's one way to test the myth). You can catch a glimpse of this robo-Jaws in the vid below.

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Spaceboys who have been crossing their legs in sympathy with the can-less astronauts on the Space Station can relax. Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko fixed the toilet after the Discovery space shuttle delivered a new pump to the ISS on Monday. The outer-space loo had been broken for two weeks, and the three-man team had been taking it in turns to swill it out manually with water. "Let's start using it," said Russian mission control to Kononenko, adding hopefully, "we'll keep our fingers crossed." In other space news, a billion-dollar Japanese science lab was opened on the ISS. Called Kibo, or hope, the 11 metre long lab is one of the largest rooms on the ISS, but will not be up and running until its porch arrives next year. [CNN]

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Buzz Lightyear is now part of the International Space Station crew, after astronauts from mission STS-124 boarded the orbital outpost yesterday at 3:36PM EDT—bringing in the 12-inch to guard us against Emperor Zurg, who has been secretly building a weapon with the destructive capacity to annihilate an entire planet. Or maybe just teach kids about math and science. I can go either way, death rays or deathly equations.

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Sure, it's an easy enough thing to find a Little Shop of Horrors plant robot that snaps shut to kill bugs, then burp comedically. But how about a bionic Venus Fly Trap that lures insects, detects them with its hidden motion detectors, then gulps them down whole and alive? The bugs fall into the clear containment chamber, which you can decorate with mementos to keep the bugs from getting too homesick, such as a stick, a leaf and maybe a piece of cheese or celery. Doing this, the Discovery Channel Store explains, allows you to "discover a world of fascinating discoveries." And yes, they do take the Discover card. [Discovery via Ubergizmo]

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This might be a good time to get some great bargains at the Discovery Store, because all 103 of the mall stores are closing their doors, apparently because the company's big cheeses decided to switch over from the physical... Read More »