STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

The First Trailer For 'Furious 7' Promises The Best Fast & Furious Movie Yet

They’re back! Everyone’s favourite family of motoring lunatics are coming back for one more ride in the Fast and Furious universe, and from the first trailer, it looks fasterer and furiouser than ever.

The last time we left the Fast & Furious crew, they’d just performed a pretty epic take-down of a London-based baddie, and restored the infamous Letty (Michelle Rodriguez).

Now in the latest chapter of the vehicular saga, the crew’s life of daring missions to rescue damsels (going from the trailer) is interrupted by a revenge vendetta from the former villain’s brother, played by professional arse-kicker, Jason Statham.

Honestly, I’m just sad Statham isn’t reprising his role as Chev Chelios from Crank. A Crank and Fast & Furious crossover is what the world needs.

The other, legitimately sad thing, is that this is the first look at Paul Walker’s last role ever. Walker died in a horrible car crash while the film was shooting, and for a spell it looked like it wouldn’t be completed. The trailer is full of subtle allusions and long pauses on Walker’s character.

[MIKA27]

HP's Gaudy Smartwatch Will Be Surprisingly Affordable

Here’s our first detailed look at the Hewlett-Packard “luxury” smartwatch teased a few months ago. It’s designed to look like a fancy metal rich-guy watch, but at $US350, you won’t need to be a rich guy to buy it.

Called the MB Chronowing, the watch is designed by Michael Bastian. It’s a 44mm stainless steel affair, with sapphire glass and a monochrome LCD display that’s got some red accents. It pairs with both iOS and Android phones and will do a host of typical smartwatch things: You’ll be able to read emails and texts, see the weather, control your music, “and more.” The functionality is only described as “with the touch of a button,” but it seems like it will be a minimal interface like what we saw on the Pebble Steel:

The Chronowing also claims to be water resistant to 5ATM, and have up to a week of battery life.

The watch will be available exclusively from Gilt when it goes on sale 7 November. The retailer tells you a lot about the target consumer: Somebody who smartwatch that doesn’t look like a dang computer. At $US350, it’s not cheap, but it’s well within the range of what smartwatches cost, and indeed, what nice watches cost. We can’t say much about the tech because we don’t know much. As for the design: It looks like the steel wristable it’s trying to imitate. [Gilt]

[MIKA27]

Four-Acre Spider Web May Be The Grossest Thing You'll See This Week

This report on a four-acre spider web covering a building has made shiver and curl in disgust. You are looking at the Baltimore Wastewater Treatment Plant, where a good chunk of their facility was covered by a web made by an estimated 107 million spiders. That’s 35,176 spiders per cubic metre!

In fact, the scientists who have documented this extraordinary spider mega city say that’s a very “markedly conservative” estimate. In fact, it was overwhelming even for experts like them:

We were unprepared for the sheer scale of the spider population and the extraordinary masses of both three dimensional and sheet-like webbing that blanketed much of the facility’s cavernous interior. Far greater in magnitude than any previously recorded aggregation of orb-weavers, the visual impact of the spectacle was was nothing less than astonishing.

In places where the plant workers had swept aside the webbing to access equipment, the silk lay piled on the floor in rope-like clumps as thick as a fire hose.

Yes, that’s a lamp being pulled by a spider web. You know what I think?

[MIKA27]

Ford Police Cruisers Now Tattle When Cops Drive Like Jerks

Everyone’s seen a cop driving like a jerk: Double parking and blocking traffic. Cruising down the highway way beyond the speed limit, with no suspect to run down. Blatantly texting while driving. Pulling the old turn-on-the-siren-just-long-enough-to-run-the-red-light trick. And for anyone who’s fantasized about making a citizen’s arrest of one of their city’s finest, police departments soon will be able to track how their cops are driving, and when they’re behaving badly.

Ford has created a way for law enforcement bosses to see where their subordinates go and track how they’re driving. Fifty Los Angeles Police Department cruisers have been outfitted with transmitters that send officers’ driving information to their supervisors, and can even tell if the boys in blue are wearing seat belts. The system is a joint effort by Ford and California software firm Telogis, and designed for the Police Interceptor models of the Explorer and Taurus. The idea is that accountability will lead to better and safer driving behavior. Auto insurance companies have been doing the same thing for years.

“From a business standpoint, these are expensive vehicles with expensive employees driving them,” says Bryan Vila, a professor and researcher at Washington State University. He also spent 17 years as an officer, including nine with the LA County sheriff. “When they crash, they’re also more likely to kill bystanders and civilians, so there’s a public safety side. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the LAPD implementing this.”

Police organizations have been ramping up education about the risks of driving fast, but Vila, having spent time with a badge and gun, understands the urge to ignore those lessons. “If you’re a young cop and someone gives you a fast car to drive, there’s a lot of temptation to do it,” Vila says. “Whether its safe, or not, and whether it’s legal, or not.”

Ford Telematics for Law Enforcement lets police departments see if their officers are giving in to those temptations. The system knows if the light bar is turned on, and measures the speed of the car against the limit. It looks for hard braking and sudden acceleration. It sees when the car spins and when the anti-lock braking system is engaged. Unlike conventional black boxes for cars, it can transmit data in real-time. And if the airbags deploy, dispatchers will see it and know to send backup immediately.

There are safety advantages for cops, too. Car crashes kill dozens of officers annually, but most California police don’t wear seat belts, according to a recent study. That may be because they find it uncomfortable while wearing other gear, they think it can prevent them from reaching their gun, or they may find it annoying given how often they get into and out of their cars. If the higher-ups want to enforce the use of seat belts, having info on who’s buckled up is a big help.

“With officers, you’re talking about a culture,” says Detective Meghan Aguilar, who’s been at the LAPD for 18 years, and whose title makes her one of the aforementioned higher-ups. “When I started it was much more common for police to not wear their seatbelt. You’re fighting a misperception that [wearing a seat belt] slows you down exiting the vehicle, pursuing a suspect.”

This type of monitoring uses technology to give supervisors eyes where they couldn’t see before. The basic principle is that being watched will prompt officers to follow the rules. “If there’s equipment that allows me to monitor that, without having to be in front of every vehicle,” Aguilar says, “there’s a good chance that behavior is going to be modified.”

That doesn’t mean every cop likes the idea of being watched over. “There’s a distinction between encouraging and active real-time monitoring that’s going to your supervisor,” says Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations. “It almost sounds like they’re trolling for violations.”

Professor Vila says this type of monitoring, used along side education about the consequences of driving irresponsibly, will be effective, and for that reason, a moral imperative. “How do you say, ‘No, I don’t want to be safer,’” he says. “There isn’t a responsible way to defend that.”

Ford hasn’t announced what the factory-installed system costs, but it should be available next year. It’s an advantage for the company, which, three years after discontinuing the Crown Victoria, competes with Chrysler and GM to provide vehicles to the nation’s police departments. If Ford can link its name to an exclusive technology like this, it could have an edge. Depending on how the LAPD’s test goes, Ford’s tech could end up in more of the 1,800 police vehicles driven by the city’s 10,000-strong police force.

[MIKA27]

Turkey: Hair removal advert 'uses al-Qaeda photo'

A Turkish company has inadvertently used an image of the imprisoned al-Qaeda official Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in an advert for a hair removal product, it's reported.

The infamous photo of the alleged 9/11 mastermind, with chest and back hair spilling out of his white T-shirt, was taken after he was captured in Pakistan in 2003. The cosmetics company used it alongside the caption: "That hair will not shed itself," The Daily Sabah website reports. But the company which created the advert is keen to point out he was chosen for his profuse body hair, not his terrorist activities. "We didn't know that he was a terrorist," company representative Mehmet Can Yildiz tells the Hurriyet Daily News. "The guy is quite hairy, so we thought his body was a good fit for our ad." He says the picture was taken from a social networking site, where it had been used several times alongside amusing captions.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is currently being held in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The 9/11 Commission Report describes him as "the principal architect" of the 2001 attacks in the United States.

[CanuckSARTech]

Ford Police Cruisers Now Tattle When Cops Drive Like Jerks

Everyone’s seen a cop driving like a jerk: Double parking and blocking traffic. Cruising down the highway way beyond the speed limit, with no suspect to run down. Blatantly texting while driving. Pulling the old turn-on-the-siren-just-long-enough-to-run-the-red-light trick. And for anyone who’s fantasized about making a citizen’s arrest of one of their city’s finest, police departments soon will be able to track how their cops are driving, and when they’re behaving badly.

Ford has created a way for law enforcement bosses to see where their subordinates go and track how they’re driving. Fifty Los Angeles Police Department cruisers have been outfitted with transmitters that send officers’ driving information to their supervisors, and can even tell if the boys in blue are wearing seat belts. The system is a joint effort by Ford and California software firm Telogis, and designed for the Police Interceptor models of the Explorer and Taurus. The idea is that accountability will lead to better and safer driving behavior. Auto insurance companies have been doing the same thing for years.

“From a business standpoint, these are expensive vehicles with expensive employees driving them,” says Bryan Vila, a professor and researcher at Washington State University. He also spent 17 years as an officer, including nine with the LA County sheriff. “When they crash, they’re also more likely to kill bystanders and civilians, so there’s a public safety side. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the LAPD implementing this.”

Police organizations have been ramping up education about the risks of driving fast, but Vila, having spent time with a badge and gun, understands the urge to ignore those lessons. “If you’re a young cop and someone gives you a fast car to drive, there’s a lot of temptation to do it,” Vila says. “Whether its safe, or not, and whether it’s legal, or not.”

Ford Telematics for Law Enforcement lets police departments see if their officers are giving in to those temptations. The system knows if the light bar is turned on, and measures the speed of the car against the limit. It looks for hard braking and sudden acceleration. It sees when the car spins and when the anti-lock braking system is engaged. Unlike conventional black boxes for cars, it can transmit data in real-time. And if the airbags deploy, dispatchers will see it and know to send backup immediately.

There are safety advantages for cops, too. Car crashes kill dozens of officers annually, but most California police don’t wear seat belts, according to a recent study. That may be because they find it uncomfortable while wearing other gear, they think it can prevent them from reaching their gun, or they may find it annoying given how often they get into and out of their cars. If the higher-ups want to enforce the use of seat belts, having info on who’s buckled up is a big help.

“With officers, you’re talking about a culture,” says Detective Meghan Aguilar, who’s been at the LAPD for 18 years, and whose title makes her one of the aforementioned higher-ups. “When I started it was much more common for police to not wear their seatbelt. You’re fighting a misperception that [wearing a seat belt] slows you down exiting the vehicle, pursuing a suspect.”

This type of monitoring uses technology to give supervisors eyes where they couldn’t see before. The basic principle is that being watched will prompt officers to follow the rules. “If there’s equipment that allows me to monitor that, without having to be in front of every vehicle,” Aguilar says, “there’s a good chance that behavior is going to be modified.”

That doesn’t mean every cop likes the idea of being watched over. “There’s a distinction between encouraging and active real-time monitoring that’s going to your supervisor,” says Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations. “It almost sounds like they’re trolling for violations.”

Professor Vila says this type of monitoring, used along side education about the consequences of driving irresponsibly, will be effective, and for that reason, a moral imperative. “How do you say, ‘No, I don’t want to be safer,’” he says. “There isn’t a responsible way to defend that.”

Ford hasn’t announced what the factory-installed system costs, but it should be available next year. It’s an advantage for the company, which, three years after discontinuing the Crown Victoria, competes with Chrysler and GM to provide vehicles to the nation’s police departments. If Ford can link its name to an exclusive technology like this, it could have an edge. Depending on how the LAPD’s test goes, Ford’s tech could end up in more of the 1,800 police vehicles driven by the city’s 10,000-strong police force.

DAMMIT!!!!!!! DAMN TECHNOLOGY ALL TO HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MIKA27]

The Gunpowder Conspiracy

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 is one of the best known events in British history. Every year on November 5th, the foiling of the plot is commemorated with fireworks and the burning-in-effigy of Guy Fawkes, the best known of the conspirators. Ostensibly, their aim was to persuade the government to take a more tolerant attitude toward Roman Catholics… by blowing up the Houses of Parliament. But does that make sense? The actual effect was quite the opposite – a hardening of anti-Catholic feeling across the country. Before the end of the 17th century, people had begun to speculate that the Gunpowder Plot was, in fact, a false flag operation aimed at achieving exactly the result it did achieve.

The basic facts of the case are well established. At the end of October a junior member of the House of Lords, Baron Monteagle, received an anonymous letter warning him to stay away from the State Opening of Parliament on November 5th. Unsure what the letter meant, Monteagle passed it on to the King’s Secretary of State, Lord Salisbury. In turn, Salisbury showed the letter to King James I, who had succeeded the far more popular Queen Elizabeth I two years earlier. The King interpreted the letter to mean that an attack would be made on the House of Lords, which was duly searched. In the early hours of 5 November Guy Fawkes was discovered in the basement, along with enough gunpowder to destroy the entire building and everyone inside it.

It soon emerged that Fawkes belonged to a group of radical Catholics. With their plot exposed, the result was the polar opposite of everything they might have hoped for. More stringent anti-Catholic legislation was introduced, nationalistic paranoia against Catholicism intensified, and the previously unpopular King’s approval rating soared through the roof.

Was Guy Fawkes a villain… or a victim?

In today’s world of social media and instant communication, the situation would have attracted cynical suspicions from the start. When the supposed perpetrators of a plot lose out so badly, and their alleged victims gain so much, it’s natural to start thinking in terms of conspiracy theories. But that wasn’t how the Gunpowder Plot was viewed at the time. The conspiracy theories had to wait a couple of generations until one of history’s most audacious “false flag” operations hit the headlines… and then people started to draw parallels.

The Popish Plot dominated English politics during the 1670s. It was a hoax from beginning to end – the work of a small group of fervent anti-Catholics who created the appearance of a far-reaching Catholic plot to kill King Charles II. The latter was – in the eyes of many people – alarmingly tolerant toward Catholicism. The King’s own wife and brother were Catholics, and he had relaxed earlier restrictions on members of that faith. The Popish Plot put a stop to all that “progressive nonsense”. The country was gripped by anti-Catholic hysteria, and more than twenty prominent Catholics were falsely accused of treason and executed.

By the early 1680s, however, the Popish Plot had been exposed as a fraud – and the people of England knew they’d been conned. They began to wonder if their grandparents had been similarly conned back in 1605. Had the Gunpowder Plot been another False Flag operation? There were striking similarities between the two cases. They both involved alleged plots by Catholics against the Protestant establishment – and both resulted in worse, rather than better, conditions for Catholics.

There were differences, though. In the case of the Popish Plot, the accused Catholics were completely innocent of the charges against them. That wasn’t the case with the Gunpowder Plot. Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators really were Catholics, and they really did want to blow up Parliament. But who gave them the idea?

Retrospective conspiracy theories often target Lord Salisbury. After all, he was the one who exposed the alleged conspiracy to the world, and he was the one who went on to foil it like a blue-blooded English hero. Does this mean Salisbury was the real architect of the conspiracy… who somehow contrived to put it in the minds of the Catholic rebels? If that sounds too far-fetched, there is another possibility. Maybe Salisbury discovered the Catholic plot weeks or months before it was put into effect, and allowed it to go ahead just so he could jump in and foil it at the last minute. That’s just the sort of thing a ruthless, scheming politician might do to further his career.

[MIKA27]

ATLAS STEAMPUNK LAMP BY FUTILITY STUDIOS

The Atlas V16 Lamp by Futility Studios is a twin-Edison bulb powered floor lamp made almost entirely from parts from vintage automobiles and motorcycles. This particular lamp uses air filters to throw a diffuse, warm light from those incandescent bulbs and would ideally suit a location in the corner of a larger room.

The full list of designs from Futility Studios is genuinely quite impressive, no two lamps are the same and it can be quite challenging to spot each of the parts used and figure out what their original application was. The pricing on these lamps is surprisingly reasonable – a smaller lamp sells for $160 and the larger Atlas V16 that you see here is retailing at just $300.

Click here to visit the Futility Studios store on Etsy.

[MIKA27]

FERRARI HEADQUARTERS IN MARANELLO, ITALY

Since its early 1900s inception, Ferrari has been blessing the world with the most luxurious sports cars ever assembled. Thanks to photographer Luca Locatelli, we now get a behind the scenes look at how each of these glorious automobiles is put together.

As he toured the their Maranello, Italy based factory, Locatelli captured stunning photos that provide rare insight into the luxury auto maker. Ferrari’s headquarters is sleek and simple, with modern machines occupying much of the space. There are still plenty of workers providing the hand finishing touches to the limited number of units that are shipped out around the world with each passing year. Enzo Ferrari passed away over two decades ago, but there’s no slowing the prancing horse.

[MIKA27]

GRAND THEFT AUTO 5 FIRST PERSON EXPERIENCE

With the holiday season right around the corner, Rockstar Games decided now was the time to release Grand Theft Auto 5 for the next generation consoles. The video game company had a trick up their sleeves though, as they reveal that Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC gamers will be able to experience both Los Santos and Blaine County in a brand new way – first person.

Feeling more like a traditional first person shooter than the latest GTA installment, this new perspective makes it feel like an entirely new game. Don’t believe us? Just check out the unreal footage above. Of course Rockstar had to make a slew of changes to the existing game in order to accommodate the new first person mode, updates like optional first person cover system, an entirely new targeting system, traditional FPS control scheme making it easy to pick up and play, and literally thousands of new animations. It will include 1080p resolution at 30FPS on both the Xbox One and PS4, and is 4K compatible for all you PC gamers out there. Rockstar has set a November 18, 2014 release date for the console versions, while PC users will have to wait until January 27, 2015 to get their fix.

[MIKA27]

Battle Crowds With A Perfect Replica Of Captain America's Shield

When you’re late for work and the train platform is packed full of meandering commuters, you don’t have time to politely push your way through the crowds. You need to use the snowplow approach to get everyone out of your way, and this Captain America shield prop replica is obviously the perfect tool for the job.

At 24-inches in diameter the shield is the exact same size as the one Captain America used in The Avengers movie because it was actually created using the same molds as the movie props. But instead of vibranium, it’s made from fibreglass and aluminium (with genuine leather straps for the handles) to ensure it’s durable but still looks indestructible. Only 1,500 of the replicas are being made, which helps explain a price tag just shy of $US1,100. Unfortunately no one ever said saving the world, or forcing your way onto a packed subway car, was going to be cheap. [Forbidden Planet]

[MIKA27]

Star Wars: Episode VII Gets a Real Title—Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Star Wars: Episode VII isn’t called Star Wars: Episode VII anymore. The title for director J.J. Abrams’ revival of the space opera franchise was announced today on social media: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Oh, yes, Abrams has also apparently finished shooting his chapter of the Star Wars saga. Quite why the title was announced with such little fanfare, at this time, or why the Force was asleep in the first place remains to be seen, of course. But at least we can rest assured that the Force will be with us once again in 2015 … and always.

[MIKA27]

This Is The Beer Of The Future

After a long day of futuristic work and hydroponic farming in the Home of the Future, we’re betting that one thing will stay exactly the same as it is today: you’ll want to crack open a cold one. But what would that cold one look like? Probably something like this magical brew from Sixpoint.

We’re pretty excited about this limited edition, exclusive, experimental beer, named Hop Tech 431.

Hop Tech 431

But first, why the name? It’s not a bungled reference to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or an obscure allusion to an HTTP error code, and although 431 is apparently “an Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part” (whatever that means), that’s not why we and Sixpoint chose Hop Tech 431 as the name for our Beer of the Future.

Instead, the answer is both more straightforward and more mysterious. Hop Tech 431 is named after the lone, experimental hop variety it is being brewed from: HBC 431. And the story behind HBC 431 is utterly fascinating.

The Future of Flavour

First, the basics. Hops — or more specifically, the flowering cones of female hop bines — are one of the key ingredients in brewing. There are dozens of different commercial varieties available, and each contributes a slightly different degree of bitterness, as well as a unique set of aroma molecules, to shape the flavour of the finished beer.

Hop cones

Brewers often blend up to ten hop varieties into a single beer to get the flavour they’re looking for. Anheuser-Busch, for example, is known to rely on traditional German varieties, including Hallertau Mittelfrueh and Spalt Select, to make Bud. Among craft brewers, Aaron Ekroth, Sixpoint’s Creative Director, told us, “Citra and Mosaic have been the hottest hop varieties of the past couple of years” — both of which are characterised by the intense citrus and tropical fruit aromas that are so popular in American IPAs right now.

But that citrus-heavy trend won’t last forever. Among the most innovative craft brewers in America, the search is already on for the next big thing in hops. The tasting notes from the sensory panel that evaluated this new variety, hop HBC 431, were filled with descriptors like “tobacco,” “fresh-cut lumber,” and even “mixed fruit cup” — and, these, says Ekroth, are what Sixpoint sees as the IPA flavours of the future.

“We’re seeing an evolution in flavour in the next few years — a step away from super hoppy citrus and pine aromas into something that’s still bold, but more herbal and earthy,” added Heather McReynolds, the Sixpoint brewer who designed Hop Tech 431′s recipe. And HBC 431 offers a sneak preview of this new-flavored future.

A 1-in-20,000 Hop

To find out how HBC 431 was prototyped, I called Gene Probasco, the hop breeder at Sixpoint’s suppliers, John I. Haas in Yakima, Washington. Probasco has been breeding hops for 30 years (when he got started, his was the only private hop-breeding program in the United States), and he is also the man behind the blockbuster Citra variety, which was released commercially in 2008.

Gene Probasco surveys his experimental hops

John I. Haas’s advanced experimental breeding program churns out roughly 20,000 new seedlings a year — fewer than one of which will end up being commercially released. HBC 431 was just one of those anonymous seedlings a decade ago, Probasco told me. Its first success came when it showed resistance to powdery mildew (a nasty disease threatening hop growers in the Northwest) during its first year in the greenhouse. That meant HBC 431 was worth sowing outside, on the trellis.

The next test came in year 4, when HBC 431 and its peers produced their first “cones,” or flowers — the part of the hop that brewers use. This is the point where most seedlings fail to make the grade — and, not to be shallow, but the decision is entirely based on their appearance.

“That’s right,” Probasco explained. “The first evaluation is, basically, what does it look like?”

Gene Probasco and Shane Welch in the experimental hop plot

Fortunately, HBC 431 is a stunner. Probasco read back through his notes: “It’s grows straight up and down, so it’s not brushy or bushy. It’s got a lot of cones — all you see is cones. They’re small and they’re heavy and they’re tight.” All of these are sure signs that HBC 431 would be easy to harvest and would produce a good yield, so Probasco and his colleagues made the decision to go from one plant to 30, and grow them out for another 2 years in an expanded plot.

It wasn’t until then, 6 years after HBC 431′s parents came together to make her, that she was first introduced to some brewers.

Probasco looked back through his files to find the notes from Sixpoint’s visit: Shane Welch (one of Sixpoint’s founders) and Aaron Ekroth had apparently “loved HBC 431′s bold aroma.”

Shane Welch looks at hops in the John I. Haas experimental plot

Encouraged by the brewers’ interest, Probasco and his team planted out 3 entire acres with HBC 431 — and it’s the yield from that experimental plot that Sixpoint are using to brew Hop Tech 431 with right now.

The Naming of the Hop

Based on all the early buzz about HBC 431, Probasco is expanding production to 12 acres this year. Nonetheless, he told me that experimental hop 431 is still at least a couple of years away, and perhaps as many as three or four, from becoming a named, commercial variety:

Once we get to the point where there’s enough customers and enough volume, then we say, OK, we’ve got to give it a name. There might be one ahead of it — 291 [an earlier cross] is getting pretty popular too. Either one of them could be the next one.

Probasco and his team had just finished naming their most recent release — Equinox™, or the hop formerly known as HBC 366 — and he told me that they don’t have anything in mind for 431 yet, so suggestions are welcome.

In the case of 336, Probasco explained that “The variety itself has quite a yellow foliage in the early summer, so we were thinking about names that had to do with yellow, and that led us to sunshine and the sun, and from there someone suggested Equinox.”

“Of Unknown Ancestry”: The Mystery of 431

As if making it as a hot new experimental hop variety wasn’t achievement enough, HBC 431 has another trick up its sleeve: No one knows exactly where it comes from.

“It’s pretty much of a mystery,” agreed Probasco. “Our sales guy described it as a slutty hop,” laughed Sixpoint’s Heather McReynolds. To make a long story short, 431′s mother is a female of unknown ancestry, who was fertilised by what breeders call “open pollination” (i.e. from random pollen floating in the air), meaning that 431′s father is a mystery, too.

“It’s kind of unusual for anything really good to come out with so much unknown about it,” Probasco admitted, laughing. “We’re normally very focused on our crosses: we know who the male is, we know who the female is, and we have reasons for bringing those two together because of certain characteristics. But 431 just happened, unplanned.”

That serendipity is all part of 431′s futuristic charm for McReynolds. As we crumbled the emerald green pellets in our hands and inhaled 431′s heady aroma, she told us that she was excited to use HBC 431 to brew the beer of the future, because, like the future itself, “I’m just curious to see how it turns out, more than anything else.”

Brewing The Brew Of The Future

Since we couldn’t get a robot to make this amazing ale for us, we brewed it the old-school way — by hand — on Sixpoint’s 15-barrel system in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

We joined brewers Danny Bruckert and Keir Hamilton to take our turn with the mash paddle (which subsequently broke, in a — we claim — entirely unrelated incident).

The Mash-In: A Full Upper Body Workout

Brewing starts with adding malted grains to hot water, a bit like making oatmeal but with sprouted, dried barley. We threw in a bunch of rice hulls to the mix, to add surface area and provide filtration, and then stirred like crazy.

This would actually make a good candidate for workout of the future, because moving 1,000 lbs of hot water and grains around combines the benefits of hot yoga with a killer upper-body conditioning session.

Hamilton, a Scot who recently joined Sixpoint from a distillery, favoured more of a twist action, while Bruckert proudly claimed to be “a back and forth kind of guy.” I had zero technique and not much in the way of stamina, either, as I pushed and pulled the wooden paddle, chasing “doughballs” — clumps of dry grains — through the porridge-like gloop.

An inadequately stirred mash risks scorching the enzymes, too, so it was with relief that we handed the paddle back to the pros, letting them flex their “brewer’s triceps” while we inhaled the clouds of deliciously biscuity steam coming off the mash tun. Meanwhile, the enzymes in the grains, activated by the heat and water, started converting the starches into fermentable sugar.

The Boil: Sugar Water, Meet Hops

The mashing process took about an hour, and then the sweet water, known as wort, was separated off from the spent grains, which will end up as animal food on regional farms (though a recent ruling from the FDA may have put a damper on that practice).

The next step was the boil: the wort was piped into a giant kettle and kept at a rolling boil for another hour or so. Danny Bruckert maintained a close eye on the clock while allowing us to tip in carefully measured bucketfuls of our one and only hop — the experimental HBC 431 — at the intervals laid out in Heather McReynold’s recipe.

The hops themselves come in pellet-form, of what looks like compressed grass clippings. As soon as they hit the hot water, they send out a whoosh of green, hoppy aroma, making me thirsty for a pint even though it was well before noon.

At the end, Bruckert explained, there’s a whirlpool built into the kettle, which spins to pull all the proteins and solids — “the stuff that makes it look like egg-drop soup” — into a green cone in the middle, allowing the clear, hopped wort to be pumped out and cooled off.

80% of Brewing is Cleaning…

At this point, we left Hop Tech 431 on its way into the fermenter, where yeast is added to feast on the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. Our work was done, but the brewers still had a big clean up job ahead.

In Red Hook, Sixpoint’s brewers have two brew-days a week, making two 15-gallon batches back-to-back on each. “The rest of the time,” complained Danny Bruckert, albeit with a grin on his face, “we’re glorified janitors, hosing down equipment, scrubbing tanks, and cellaring beer.”

For the next two weeks, the Sixpoint team checked in on Hop Tech 431 daily as it conditioned, tasting it for off flavours, and measuring the gravity to see how much of the sugar had been consumed.

But Then You Get to Drink Beer!

When we came back to sample the final product, sixteen days after our mash-tun work-out, there was a palpable tension in the air. None of the brewers had worked with this experimental hop before, and there wasn’t time to make another batch if this one turned out to taste disgusting — or simply just meh.

Even the ever-cheerful Danny Bruckert looked a tiny bit apprehensive as he tapped the cask and pulled a pint of Hop Tech 431 for each of us. We clinked glasses, said cheers, sniffed (an important beer geek first step, to check out the aromas), sipped… and smiled.

In fact, it was so good — refreshing and approachable but with a lovely full body and nuanced fruity, earthy flavour — that before I had finished my first glass, I was considering starting a Change.org petition to add Hop Tech 431 to Sixpoint’s permanent line-up.

If this is the beer of the future, then getting older may not be such a bad thing, after all!

[MIKA27]

Watch This Terrifying Halloween Commercial Take An Unexpected Twist

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This halloween inspired commercial by flexible and low-cost mobile network GiffGaff has become a viral hit with those who likes their damsels in distress mixed with a healthy dose of black humour (Steve - OzCuban thats you! ).

Thanks to its high quality production and spooky atmosphere, it's not hard to see why.

We won't want to ruin the ending for you, but just know you can expect bloodcurdling screams, scary horror music, that creepy woodland area along with faceless monsters, zombies and killer dolls popping up out of the shadows along the way.

Everything you need then for one refreshing and frighteningly good clip - just make sure you watch it with the lights turn on and your door safely locked....

[MIKA27]

Cuba: Viewers enthralled by South Korean soap operas

Soap operas from South Korea have found an unlikely audience among Cubans, it's been reported.

The popular show Jewel in the Palace is the newest import on Cuban television, continuing the "implausible" success of Korean soaps in the country, the Chosun Ilbo website reports. Cultural differences seem to be part of the appeal for Cubans accustomed to watching dramatic Brazilian soaps. "The leisurely pace and somewhat stationary acting of the Korean fare apparently contrasts pleasantly with the endless high-octane histrionics of Latin American telenovelas," the website says. Jewel in the Palace tells the story of an orphaned female cook who defies the odds to become the first woman to serve as the king's personal physician.

The first Korean soap to be shown in Cuba, Queen of Housewives, started broadcasting last year. It tells the story of a glamorous, strong-minded housewife, and even has a famous fan: Alex Castro, son of Cuba's former leader Fidel, admits he watches it with his wife, Chosun Ilbo adds. The soaps' success in the Caribbean is in stark contrast to the reaction in neighbouring North Korea. In October it was reported that 10 Workers' Party officials had been executed for watching South Korean soaps. The executions were not officially confirmed by North Korea.

[MIKA27]

Was the Unabomber a Eugene O’Neill Fan?

A biographer untangles the FBI’s 20-year-old theories about links between the Unabomber and the American playwright Eugene O’Neill.

My mailman, David, is the sunny-faced sort who brightens my block each afternoon, no matter the weather, with a glowing smile. But one day in the spring of 2012, I couldn’t help wonder, when he took a singular letter from my outgoing mail slot, whether he might report me to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, or worse, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My envelope was addressed to a supermax prison in Colorado, the addressee a man once feared and reviled, especially among David’s kind: Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski—a.k.a. “the Unabomber.”

That spring I was nearing the end of the research stage of my biography on the playwright Eugene O’Neill when my theater director neighbor, Derron, casually mentioned an obscure and only briefly reported connection that federal investigators had made between Ted Kaczynski, a notorious domestic terrorist, and O’Neill, the nation’s foremost playwright.

“When the Unabomber wanted to kill his victims, he used O’Neill stamps on his package bombs,” Derron told me. “Didn’t you know?” Stumbling across such arcana this way is one of the great pleasures in the life of a literary historian, and a quick Google search turned up a couple of brief news items from the summer of 1996: The Unabomber had in fact applied $1 Eugene O’Neill commemorative stamps, from the “Prominent American” series, to package bombs designed to kill the addressee. If Kaczynski merely wanted to injure or maim his targets, the FBI had surmised, he made do with stamps from the same series of the former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the cowboy performer Will Rogers, or the seminal feminist Lucy Stone.

Between 1978 and 1995, Ted Kaczynski terrorized the United States with a horrific series of package bombs so cleverly designed as to waylay any trace back to their source; by the time he was captured, he’d killed three people and injured 23. Over those years, he’d been targeting sources of technological “progress,” specifically universities and airlines. (His designation by the FBI was the “UNABOM subject,” short for University and Airline Bomber). Given the length of time he’d eluded his would-be captors, nearly 18 years, the investigation had swelled into one of the most expensive manhunts in FBI history. By the time of Kaczynski’s arrest, the federal government had spent more than $50 million on his investigation. The agents in charge were under immense pressure to make headway in the case.

Thus through the stage door, so to speak, appears the specter of Eugene O’Neill.

Ted Kaczynski “was a well-read guy, a genius,” a federal agent directly involved in the case told The Day newspaper of New London, Connecticut (the paper of record in O’Neill’s hometown, and now mine). “He would not have developed a pattern like this by accident,” he said, after Kaczynski’s capture in 1995. “He placed a lot of symbolic value on the stamps.”

Straightaway I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the FBI file on any connection they’d made between O’Neill and the Unabomber, and my mounting curiosity incited me to write directly to Kazcynski in prison. A little more than a year later, returning from a trip to O’Neill’s home on Sea Island, Georgia, I arrived at my front porch and there it was: a heavy package from the FBI. And then, the very next day, an email arrived from my English department: “Rob, were you expecting a letter from the Unabomber?!” As a matter of fact I was.

The FBI’s package of material, though incomplete and partially redacted, confirmed that the agency had discovered remnants of O’Neill’s commemorative stamps at five crime scenes over his years-long rampage, including ten of them for his first attack in 1978 at Northwestern University. So in early January 1995, they opened a file titled “Eugene O’Neill,” and another on the Eugene O’Neill Society (for which I currently serve as a member of the board) with directories of its members—now considered potential suspects—from 1979 to 1992. They also diligently investigated, as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2001, “everyone who signed the visitors’ list” at O’Neill’s childhood home, Monte Cristo Cottage in New London.

Once Kaczynski’s stamp pattern was identified, the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit (ISU) submitted this criminal profile, on January 17, 1995, to the UNABOM Task Force (UTF) based on consultations with a clinical psychologist: “Eugene O’Neill, a playwright who drew upon the tragedy of his own life, is said to have functioned as a social critic and moral guide for American society. The UNABOM subject may view himself in a parallel role. O’Neill is quoted as saying, ‘In all my plays sin is punished and redemption takes place.’ … There are several interesting points about O’Neill, his personality, his works, etc., which might play some role in the UNABOM subject’s behavior. For example, [improvised explosive] device #4 was concealed in the book Ice Brothers; one of O’Neill’s most noted plays was The Iceman Cometh … O’Neill was responsible for introducing innovative uses of symbolism to the American theater in the early 1900’s. Some critics complained that his symbolism was obscure and was lost on the audience. There is little question that the UNABOM subject also engages in much symbolism. Unfortunately, unlike most serial violent offenders with a message, the UNABOM subject has not communicated his message and the meaning of his symbolism is lost.”

Seven months later, on August 24, 1995, the ISU affirmed their previous report to the UTF, but with a caveat: “The Eugene O’Neill stamp has importance and meaning to the UNABOM subject,” the subsequent report noted, but “within the realm of possibilities, no one can say with certainty, what this significance or specific behavior might be.”

“Without any forensic evidence or specific behavior on which to base an analysis, drawing a specific connection between Eugene O’Neill’s anarchist views and the UNABOM subject’s goals would be speculative at this point. The only person who knows the reason or reasons these stamps are important is the UNABOM subject himself.”

This wasn’t the first time the playwright’s name had crossed a federal agent’s desk. During the aftermath of the Red Scare of the ’20s, by which time O’Neill had publicly declared the United States to be “the most reactionary country in the world,” an agent from what was then the Bureau of Investigation had dispatched another internal memorandum on the playwright.

Dated April 22, 1924, and submitted a month before J. Edgar Hoover took over as acting director, the memo was filed under Classification 61: Treason. His play The Hairy Ape, the agent noted, “could easily lend itself to radical propaganda.” Along with this play’s potential effect on America’s “radical fraternity,” the bureau took particular note of O’Neill’s preoccupation with racial inequality, “a favorite theme of O’Neil’s [sic],” according to the memorandum. (I obtained a copy of the original through the same FOIA request as the Unabomber file).

Indeed, one of the more stunning moments in O’Neill’s career was a near-treasonous anti-American declaration he made much later, in 1946, at a press conference to promote The Iceman Cometh. It was his first public appearance in more than a decade, at the height of the patriotic triumphalism then gripping postwar America, and O’Neill stunned reporters with a statement lambasting “the American Dream” and hinting darkly about a coming reckoning:

“Some day this country is going to get it—really get it,” he declared. “We had everything to start with—everything—but there’s bound to be a retribution. We’ve followed the same selfish, greedy path as every other country in the world. We talk about the American Dream and want to tell the world about the American Dream, but what is that dream, in most cases, but the dream of material things? I sometimes think that the United States, for this reason, is the greatest failure the world has ever seen. We’ve been able to get a very good price for our souls in this country—the greatest price perhaps that has ever been paid.”

Throughout his adult life, O’Neill was, like Kaczynski, a self-identified anarchist. But unlike Kaczynski’s conviction that only violence was capable of dismantling technological power and reverting our species back to its primitive state, O’Neill’s “philosophical anarchism” advocated nonviolent protest against all institutional power, mostly by ignoring it. “I am a philosophical anarchist,” he said in 1946, “which means, ‘Go to it, but leave me out of it.’”

Had Kaczynski actually read O’Neill’s 1928 play Dynamo, as the FBI also presumed and reported to the press, he would’ve discovered that O’Neill shared his revolutionary outrage against the societal effects of technology, but no more. O’Neill rejected terrorism as well as state-sponsored violence. “True anarchism,” he wrote in 1940, “never justifies bloodshed.”

Still, the FBI’s bogus theories would surely have furnished the “Black Irish” dramatist with a dose of ironic amusement. Nearly all of O’Neill’s representations of law enforcement are satirically drawn, and many of his plays—The Web, The Dreamy Kid, The Hairy Ape, Desire Under the Elms, The Great God Brown, A Touch of the Poet, and The Iceman Cometh—end with policemen awkwardly confronted with depths of tragic humanity only O’Neill could conjure.

Sure enough Kaczynski, in his reply to my letter inquiring about his political connection to the playwright, claimed the FBI’s link of him to O’Neill was “bull manure.” “I’ve never had the faintest interest in Eugene O’Neill,” he wrote in a carefully printed hand, “and I’ve never read anything by him, unless perhaps I was required to read something of his in a high-school English course, in which case I promptly forgot it.” He thanked me for the coorespondence, but warned me not to “believe anything you’ve read or heard about me in the media or on the Internet … I simply bought stamps of a specified denomination, and I took whatever stamps of that denomination were handed to me over the counter or came out of the vending machine.”

My mailman David assured me recently that he only inspects outgoing envelopes enough to make sure there’s sufficient postage. In our post-Edward Snowden America, the notion of being wary of a mailman’s inspection seems laughably quaint, I know. Had the initial FBI investigation taken place in our current age, who knows to what extent they might have gone to peruse my and my fellow O’Neill Society members’ private computer files?

In the end, though, it was Kaczynski’s parting advice that offered the last laugh.

“I suggest you read the book Technological Slavery,” his letter concludes, “which you can probably get from amazon.com.”

[MIKA27]

TASTING THE FULL 2014 BOURBON COUNTY STOUT LINE

If you heard Goose Island Beer Co. was coming into town with their upcoming Black Friday release of their Bourbon County Stout lineup, which features some of the most coveted beers brewed in the US, you’d expect a little fanfare. Maybe a smallish parade, rows of thirsty Chicagoans waving and cheering and embracing as a refrigerated motorcade rides by with a four-pack of beer clinking in the passenger seat. Nothing too expensive. But when Mike Siegel, innovations manager for Goose Island, carried the lineup in for tasting, it was at room temperature and accompanied by little plastic cups, the sort any corner store would carry. For those charged with brewing it, this is a beer without pretense.

But this isn’t humility so much as confidence. Goose Island was among the first craft breweries to age their beer in bourbon barrels (they introduced the Bourbon County Stout in 1993), their rarest offering were aged in the legendary 23 year old Pappy Van Winkle barrels and they now possess over 7,000 barrels toward that purpose, the largest of any brewery. In the midst of a growing trend, with anything from beer to hot sauce to horseradish being frantically shoved inside bourbon barrels, Goose Island is in the middle of quadrupling their warehouse space in anticipation of ramping up their already dominant production, one of the financials benefits of their 2011 purchase by AB InBev.

For newcomers to barrel aging, Goose Island’s success would be hard to replicable, even if they didn’t get an early start. They welcome variation and luck. They don’t temperature control their aging warehouse, they don’t worry about having the same barrels or coffee beans every year and they never expect one year’s release to taste like any other’s. They brew it in the spring. They bottle it in late September/early October. They put it on the shelves November 28th. It’s off the shelves by November 29th.

Back at the tasting, Siegel was confidently serving the beer warm (he said never below 50 degrees) because its meant to be sipped at like bourbon or red wine — it has the flavors of the former and the alcohol content of the latter. And straight out of bottle it’s only lightly carbonated, because, as Siegel puts it, people get a little too worked up over a big head.

“It has enough flavor for a mouth feel on its own, you don’t have to have carbonation on your tongue to highlight the flavors.”

And in regards to tasting the stuff, while a snifter is the preferred vessel for a stout, as Siegel put it, “Don’t coddle it. Just let it rip.”

BOURBON COUNTY STOUT

The first and flagship of the Bourbon County lineup pours black, with a chocolate brown head that quickly disappears. Of all the barrels currently being used by Goose Island, over 3,000 are dedicated to aging Bourbon County Stout, which takes about six months. After aging, they are all emptied by hand by the small team of brewers, a process requiring months of labor. The point is, this took a while to make, so it should take a while to drink. And at 13.8 percent, this is doubly true.

On the nose you’ll pick up on chocolate, cherry and vanilla absorbed from the bourbon barrels, but these sweet smells aren’t translated into an overly sweet taste; they are balanced by the bitterness of the roasted malts. The beer is so deep and flavorful that it distracts your taste buds while the alcohol sneaks up and slaps you right across the face as soon as you try to stand up. The layers of roast, smoke, vanilla and coffee deserve time to age in the bottle, even up to five years. So buy four, drink one, age the rest.

BOURBON COUNTY BARLEYWINE

The barleywine has a completely different mash bill than the other stouts in the lineup, and is aged in barrels only after they age one batch of the original Bourbon County Stout, making this the palest and most mellow beer of the bunch. This isn’t saying much. The barleywine pours a deep rose color and smells like it belongs next to a desert tray. It’s an english style barleywine, meaning it’s malt driven but this sweetness isn’t covered by any roasted barley, like in the stout. This sugar content makes it a yeast cells dream, and bringing the alcohol up to 12.3 percent; they ferment 120 barrels of it at a time, in 200 barrel tanks, and the fermenter still overflows with foam, sending rivers of barleywine down the brewery floor drains.

Notes of vanilla, berries and toffee make it what Siegel called a “perfect winter warmer” and it tastes remarkably like chocolate covered cherries. Although it’s not a popular style, the brewers started making barleywine last year because they personally love the style, and this passion shows through in the end. If you don’t like this barleywine, you don’t like barleywine. Pair it with creme brûlée and flannel.

BOURBON COUNTY COFFEE

Siegel literally drives a forklift to their next door neighbor, Intelligentsia Coffee, to pick up the 1,800 lbs of beans used to make this coffee stout. While the brewers typically drink the house and black cat espresso blends during the workday, they opt for more exotic blends from smaller farms for the Bourbon County Coffee Stout. They want something with a story. The blends are chosen through a blind taste test put on by the brewers. Last year’s brew (the one I tasted) was brewed with Los Inmortales beans from El Salvador. This year it’s Zirikana from Rwanda.

After Intelligentsia roasts and grinds the coffee beans, Goose Island cold brews the coffee at double strength. Then, unlike brewers who add coffee directly to the mash, they simply pour the brewed coffee into a portion of the Bourbon County Stout brew right before it’s bottled, diluting the ABV to slightly more reasonable level and accentuating the coffee notes already present. The coffee flavor mellows in the bottle and the coffee stout I tried was from last year, so it unfortunately tasted like a weaker version of their Bourbon County Stout only a slight creep of coffee flavors. Still good by most measures, and Siegel promises that this year’s fresh batch won’t have you “rooting around for any flavors.”

BOURBON COUNTY VANILLA RYE & PROPRIETOR’S BCS

Unfortunately, because it’s an extremely limited bottling that won’t be available outside of Chicago, Siegel didn’t bring the Proprietor’s BCS to NYC. It’s brewed to thank the unending support of Goose Island’s neighbors. But for those curious, this year’s Proprietor’s brew is the original stout with a few worldly additions: cassia bark from Vietnam, coconut water from Thailand, cocoa nibs from Congo and panela sugar from Mexico.

The vanilla rye wasn’t quite bottled at the time of the tasting. The last time it actually was bottled and released was 2010, and since then it’s become a sort of legend, a white whale of beer collectors, listed at 200 dollars on secondary markets. This year, after spending months in rye whiskey barrels instead of bourbon (think more spice, less sweet) with a mix of Mexican and Madagascar vanilla beans, it’s finally back.

FINDING THE STUFF

While their collectibility means you can find these stouts on the secondary market, if you can’t get a hold of one of these bottle (or illegally purchasing alcohol isn’t your bag), don’t sweat it. One of the benefits of being sold to AB InBev is that Goose Island faces much more opportunity to expand their distribution. And while there distribution expands, so does their lineup. They’ve developed 32 unique beers in the last 26 months, even if they don’t quite yet have the reputation of Bourbon County Stout.

[MIKA27]

COCOON HOME SECURITY SYSTEM

Instead of being summoned to go check out every strange noise that happens between midnight and 4AM (no one’s worried about them at 5 in the morning—too early), what if you had a device that did it for you? The Cocoon home security system promises to do just that.

The key to it all is something called SUBSOUND technology, which incorporates the analysis of infrasound (low frequency sounds outside the range of human hearing) and audible sound waves to create a “protective cocoon inside your home.” The device – which includes an HD camera, microphone, siren, motion detector, and Wi-Fi – then learns what sounds are normal for your home, and alerts you when it hears something abnormal. And it’s not just one room either; the Cocoon promises to sense activity in your whole home, and tell the difference between an intruder and a regular person, or even your dog. [Purchase]

[MIKA27]

This Comic Book Make-Up Is Blowing My Mind

I’m in awe of anyone who can pull off amazing cosplay. It breaks my brain to see how creative some people are, and this video is no exception. YouTube make-up artist MadeULook did this amazing tutorial on how to make yourself look like you’ve leapt out of the pages of a comic book in a few different ways.

The make-up does an amazing job on forcing perspective so it looks like a 2D image has become 3D. Check it out.

[MIKA27]

Amazon Echo: An Intelligent Speaker That Listens To Your Commands

Amazon Echo is a speaker that has a voice assistant built in. If you ask it a question its got an answer. If you tell it to do stuff, it complies. Well, this is different.

Echo is an always-on speaker that you plop into a corner of your house and turns it into the futuristic homes we’ve been dreaming about. It’s like Jarvis, or the assistant computer from Her.

When you say the wake word “Alexa,” it starts listening and you can ask it for information or to perform any of a number of tasks. For example, you can ask it for the weather, to play a particular style of music, or to add something to you calendar.

Of course voice assistants aren’t an entirely new concept, but building the technology into a home appliance rather than into a a smartphone makes a lot of sense and gives the technology a more conversational and natural feel. To that end, its got what Amazon calls “far-field recognition” that allows you to talk to it from across the room. It eliminates the clumsiness of assistants like Siri and Google Now that you have to be right on top of.

Besides being an assistant, Echo is also a little Bluetooth speaker with 360-degree sound. It stands 9-inches tall, has a 2-inch tweeter and a 2.5-inch woofer.

If you’re not near the speaker, you can also access it using an app for Android and Fire OS as well as through web browsers on iOS.

Right now, Echo is available by invitation only. According to Amazon, “invites will go out in the coming weeks.” It costs $US200 for regular people and $US100 for people who have an Amazon Prime account. If the speaker sounds good, it’s a steal given all of the extra functionality built in. This thing can’t get in my kitchen soon enough.

[MIKA27]

Your Smartphone Could One Day Be Powered By Jet Fuel

Battery life on modern gadgets sucks — so why not power your mobile devices with something a little more potent like, err, jet fuel? That’s the idea of researchers from the University of Utah, who think that fuel cells could efficiently be made to run using the same fuel as fighter jets.

The problem with most fuel cells, you see, is that they run on hydrogen — which can be hard to get hold of and is actually quite dangerous. So a team of researchers has developed an alternative that uses JP-8, a jet fuel used by warplanes that are flying in extreme climates, and one of the safest fuels used in military applications.

The new cells developed at the University of Utah may use enzymes to break down the fuel into electricity — creating no perceptible hear in the process. The cells works at room temperature, even when there are impurities in the fuel. That’s useful, because jet fuel often contains sulfur, which can interrupt the catalysts used in conventional fuel cells. Instead, the new fuel cells use a cascade of catalysts — alkane monooxygenase and alcohol oxidase — to make the process more robust.

Clearly this isn’t the kind of solution that’s going to help us avoid the use of fossil fuels, but it could provide electronics with long-lasting power supplies that can be used in harsh environments, miles away from electricity supplies.

[MIKA27]

Motorola's Gold Moto 360 Is Real, And So Is Its Activity Tracking App

First it was real, then it wasn’t. Then it appeared on Amazon for a hot second. Today, Motorola finally did us all a favour and confirmed their shiny gold white whale of a smartwatch, the gold-faced Moto 360 — along with some other design updates.

In a blog post today, Motorola announced some new peripherals for its round-faced watch, including interchangeable bands and an option for metal-faced bands in both grey and gold. You’ll also be able to create your own interface design via an app called My Design, a feature we knew was coming after Motorola launched a design competition earlier this year. It’s no surprise that the company wants to provide you with every opportunity to upgrade and customise your 360, just like Apple is hoping you’ll spring for a wildly expensive luxe version of the Apple Watch.

And another update: A new feature called Moto Body, which will “an experience designed to inspire a healthier lifestyle,” in the words of Moto’s Lally Narwal. It sounds like the app will do everything you might expect a smartwatch health tracker to do: Count calories, steps, how far you’ve traveled, and heart rate. The slick circular interface looks like a nice addition:

It looks as though the “champagne gold” finish 360 will cost $US330, a light metal version will run $US300. It looks as though they will both be available within a month or two.

[MIKA27]

Australian Man Spent Two Years Building Working Replica Of The 1989 Batmobile

Zac Mihajlovic — a 29-year-old Batman fan from Camden, New South Wales — spent two years building this The car is road legal and he uses it mainly to make sick kids happy together with the Make-A-Wish foundation.

Zac bought some parts from the original car and built others. Apart from the weapons the car is pretty close to the one Michael Keaton drove in the movie.

[MIKA27]

Court Forces Google To Help Marvel Find Avengers Trailer Leaker

It’s perhaps no surprise that Marvel wants the head of whoever leaked the trailer for the forthcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron movie. Perhaps more shocking, though, is that Google is being forced to roll over and help it do so.

Yesterday, a federal judge granted Marvel a subpoena against Google, which will help it find out where the leak came from. Google was told:

“You are commanded to produce at the time, date, and place set forth below the following documents, electronically stored information, or objects, and to permit inspection, copying, testing, or sampling of the material.”

The subpoena goes on to command Google to take “all identifying information for the user ‘John Gazelle’” to court on November 18th in San Francisco.

Apparently, Marvel also asked to for “entry onto the designated premises, land, or other property possessed or controlled by you at the time, date, and location set forth.” But it didn’t get that. Instead, it’s asking for “the IP address from which the file named ‘ap-tlr-l_int_360p.mp4′ and containing content known as Avengers: Age of Ultron was uploaded to the Google Drive Site” and whatever else Google will tell it.

Clearly, Marvel is very keen to make sure that whoever did leak the trailer pays for it — and presumably it’s someone internal. It’s quite a swift move on the court’s part though, and an interesting example of the law siding with big business rather than individual privacy.

But regardless of what happens to Gazelle, at least the leak means we all got to see the trailer ahead of schedule. So, uh, good excuse to watch it again?

[MIKA27]

Cyborg Cockroaches Could Be Used To Save Trapped Humans

Controlling cockroaches with electrical ‘backpacks’ is one of those science experiments that’s simultaneously quite cool and ethically a little bit grey. What might make you feel better, though, is the knowledge that those remote-controlled cockroaches may save your life if you ever get trapped inside a burning building.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have outfitted cyborg cockroaches with microphones which, when wired up to the roaches’ normal sensory appartus, means that the ‘biobots’ will seek out the source of a sound. The scientists hope that, in addition to providing a good tracking tool to Skynet, this will also enable humans to find other humans in enclosed spaces like a collapsed building.

Cyborg cockroaches themselves are nothing particularly new — ‘Roboroach‘ kits let you cheaply control your very own cockroach, by microstimulating the cockraoches’ antennae with eletrical signals — like steering a horse with reins, only these reins are electrodes that are strapped to their heads.

The North Carolina researchers took this one step further, attaching microphones to their roaches’ cerci, which are the sensory organs that cockroaches normally use to sense if their abdomen brushes into something. Therefore, by stimulating the cerci, the roach can be ‘encouraged’ to move forward, or left, or right, and ultimately towards the source of a sound. The hope is that those sounds will end up being people screaming for help, and that by trapping the cockroaches’ transmitters, rescuers will be able to find people trapped in disaster scenarios.

What having a team of cyborg cockroaches crawling over the victims will do to their mental health remains to be seen.