Radiation as constantly proved to be less deadly then first thought. Every revision estimates for deaths goes down.
----

And on to the truely epic;

http://news.discovery.com/space/2009...ok-825x528.jpg

SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnight2 in their glory.



http://news.discovery.com/space/2009...on-825x583.jpg

The mother ship is also planned to be used for orbital satalite launchs;
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/in...p?itemid=14239

Only light satellites, but $2million is cheap.

Nice, I'll definitely be going to space. And I'm totally looking forward to be one of the firsts to populate cities built in space stations.

...
....On a personal note... I thought I developed a brilliant method to compress data to almost nothing, and now I've been stupefied by a flaw that makes it stupid. Argggh math is a bitch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X85Lpuczy3E

So yeah, who's getting one when they're xactly like a human's? :P

Wow, that's pretty rad. Next up: artificial eye. (personally I can't wait to have my eyes replaced with bionic ones, it'd be so cool)

This feeling hand thing reminds me of the comic Academy X where this girl got completely paralyzed from the neck down, so she used a telekinesis-amplifier helmet to move her muscles Wi-Fi-style. But she couldn't feel anything.

Amazing indeed.
Really shows not only how fast tech's advancing, but also how amazing our brains are at adapting.
Not sure Id see the nessceity for having it perminately implanted though. Emulating nature is great upto a point, but surely keeping it detachable makes it easy for maintenance and upgrades?

Yeah, last time I checked though they only had 32x32 pixal resolution or something.
Interfacing optical signals direct to the brain is very,very tricky because the brain moves about. (weirdly though, as long as its in the right area, given time, the brain can learn to understand it...you dont need to be exactly emulating the optic nerve).

Unrelated; next up you should edit the thread title to "The Hi-tech thread (Water EVERYWHERE!!1!)".

Dark matter possibly, maybe, perhaps found:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/sh...rk-matter.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_cowl..._s_future.html

Dude talks about fusion. There's too little real science vids on TED lately, only all of that sociological boredom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSKxz1BNU6s

James Randi talks about the bullshit that is homeopathy.

Cellular voice calls encryption cracked for the first time since 1988 and the code is available to everyone.

More cool robotic hands;
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/0..._content=Gmail

This is amazing! In 15 years or so I guess they'll be nearly as good as they're in Star Wars. And maybe in 30 years they'll be affordable? Seriously, incredible stuff. I had no idea prosthetic technology was this advanced.

Yeah, theres these moments where I think "holy fuck we really are living in the future now"

We lived in the future 10 years ago. Now... we're past the future.

Dunno, seems to have been some particular incredible developments in the last two years especially.

Yep. Development that's been increasing in an accelerating rate since the age of the prehistoric man and is now about to reach a its peak... a metaphorical explosion... and then chaos. And then we'll slowly get ourselves back together and start progressing in an accelerating rate towards the next peak.

This is pretty neat;
http://mrdoob.com/90/Face_tracking_+_3D_Scene
Demostration of head tracking done in flash.
If you set it up, shut one eye and move your head slowly you get a pretty good 3D effect.

Its not as fluid as Jonhney-Lee's Wiimote based version, but its pretty nifty you can do this in flash with just a webcam.

Of course, for practical use in games youd need a much smoother/more accurate refresh (and a good webcam) and z-axis and rotation also done in software...but still, cool for just a software thing.
I wish more people were looking into this, as, (imho) for games this sort of 3D actually is more important then steroscopic 3d. Giving a person their own viewpoint which moves precisely to the subtle movements of the head helps us build a model of our environment.

it doesnt work

Care to elaborate?
You do have to move your head pretty slowly, as most webcams blur when you move fast, but thats a limitation of the camera not the software.

Not exactly technology, but a demonstration of the power of the internet/crowd sourcing;

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10411211-93.html

Saw this on The Daily Show the other day.
Finding all those balloon locations in just 8 hours 50 minutes....thats just "wow".

AR being used to treat some brain-based medical conditions;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gZhm...layer_embedded

Ok, we have all seen stuff like this before, but here's a particularly interesting collection;
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347

Seamless controllable flash-zoom from the smallest thing we know, to the largest.
Lots of interesting comparisons along the way too.

I never knew HIV was the same size as a CD pit, or that there's a star we know of more then half the size of our solar system O_o

That's so cool, I love it. Reminds me of The Wonderful End Of The World a bit.

I don't think there's anything "outside" of the universe, but I'm sure there is a lot outside of the dimensions that make the universe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEpZFEIDHdc
Cool documntary about Chaos, Alan Turing, Mandelbrot Fractals, self organizing systems, increasing complexity arising from simple systems and Evolution.

Oh shi-

(that documentary looks interesting though, I shall watch it)

This is really neat;
http://www.magicvisionlab.com/projects/vhar/

Look at the Movie of SPIDAR device at the bottom. It seems low tech and high-tech at the same time. The user is feeling the rubix cube as they manipulate it.