Survival/Defense

Social networks, surveillance, and terrorism

“We are creating systems of comprehensive surveillance in which a billion people are involved and those people’s lives are being lived under a kind of scrutiny which no secret police service is the 20th century could ever have aspired to achieve,” claims militant digital privacy advocate Eben Moglen, Betabeat reports. “And all of that data [...]

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random | Bots gone wild

Introducing random — a new, occasional blog category for stuff that’s way too weird for our regular weird posts. Like these wacky robot stories: Wanna take a ride on a 15-foot-long inflatable walking robot named Ant-Roach (as in anteater-cockroach)? Um, maybe not, but hey, “human safe” bots are not a bad idea, especially if you [...]

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Let’s tell everyone how to make a virus that could kill millions!

Here’s an idea: why don’t we just tell everybody in the world how to make an airborne H5N1 influenza virus strain (“bird flu”) that has been genetically altered to be easily transmissible (between ferrets, which mostly closely mimic the human response to flu), and which if released, could trigger an influenza pandemic, quite possibly with [...]

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A limitless power source for the indefinite future

On Monday, the National Space Society (NSS) will present findings from an eye-opening new report by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). You’re hearing about this here first. (Full disclosure: I’m a member of the NSS board of directors.) Some background: By 2030–40, the projected annual electrical energy consumption will be a staggering 220 trillion [...]

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Every breath you take, every move you make …

Those University of Utah engineers who built wireless networks that see through walls are now taking it a step further: detecting if surgery patients, adults with sleep apnea, and babies at risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) have stopped breathing. This thing freaks me out a bit. Think what Homeland Security could do with [...]

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How to remotely hack into Wi-Fi networks and cell-phone calls

Ever want to fly a remote-controlled plane over houses, recording cell-phone conversations and text messages at random and hacking into Wi-Fi networks and computers? Well, first, click here and report yourself. Then check out the Defcon session (August 4–7, Las Vegas) by Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins on the latest version of their WASP (Wireless [...]

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Sex and the Red Queen hypothesis

Biologists at Indiana University have discovered why it takes two to tango. (Insert obligatory geeks-who-can’t-get-a-date joke here.) The biologists claim their research shows that sex allows parents to produce offspring that are more resistant to co-evolving parasites, while self-fertilization dooms populations to extinction at the hands of their biological enemies. It’s the Red Queen hypothesis, a [...]

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Stealth mold genes take over human genome, jump to databases and chips!

“Earlier this year, molecular biologists announced that 20 per cent of nonhuman genome databases are contaminated with human DNA, probably from the researchers who sequenced the samples,” Technology Review‘s The Physics ArXiv blog said on Thursday. “Now, the human genome itself has become contaminated. Bill Langdon at University College London and Matthew Arno at Kings College [...]

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‘Extensive if not complete’ meltdown of three Fukushima reactors just 16 hours after the earthquake: coverup?

ScienceInsider (published by Science magazine) reported Tuesday May 17 that “over the last week, a combination of robotic and human inspections has led to the conclusion that the fuel assemblies in units 1, 2, and 3 were completely exposed to the air for from over 6 hours to over 14 hours and that melting was [...]

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A Darwinian explanation for the Fermi paradox [UPDATED 4/21/2011]

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations. As Enrico Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” One answer is that extraterrestial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since [...]

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