Chad’s News

A company named NeuroSky has developed brainwave reading technology that can detect when a person is focusing on a fixed image. They created a prototype toy lightsaber that lights up when the user concentrates on it. When his/her attention wanders, it turns off. Apparently this is just the beginning of what they can determine from reading brainwaves. The initial market will be toys and games, but I think it could be used in a wide range of applications.

Link: http://www.businessweek.com/…
(via TheForce.Net)

From the article: “I?ve seen more than a few interesting resume bullets in my time. The top candidate … has to be when someone put on their resume that they were the leader of a 6,000 member clan (guild?) on World of Warcraft.”

Link: http://www.bargaineering.com/…
(via Consumerist)

HD-DVD discs use an encryption scheme known as AACS, which has a publicly-disclosed algorithm—the secret lies in the 128-bit encryption keys that are carefully guarded by the makers of HD-DVD players. A key was discovered and, this last week, posted on digg. It received over 15,000 diggs (which is a lot) before being removed at the request of the MPAA and the AACS Licensing Authority. The digg community went absolutely berserk, and for the next day or so every subsequent post was either about the key or had the key in the comments.

Back in January a program named BackupHDDVD was published. It implements the AACS algorithm but requires an encryption key as input, so at the time it was downplayed as the crack that wasn’t. But now, with the key, it works just fine. Note that AACS has a mechanism to disable keys, but it only works on future disc releases.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://en.wikipedia.org/…

Link #3: http://www.nytimes.com/…

This is a really neat idea. When your honey is feeling down, just whip out the emergency romance kit to help cheer her up.

Link: http://www.diynetwork.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Remember the Amiga computer? It was well ahead of its time back in the late 80s, but it never really took off beyond being a niche computer for graphic artists. The brand has stuck around, however, and Amiga, Inc. has announced a new line of computers running Amiga OS. I doubt it will amount to much, but I still have a soft spot for the brand.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Apple has updated QuickTime to fix a serious security flaw. Download the new version here.

Link: http://www.computerworld.com/…

This man stole a Jeep from a dealership and then later tried to trade it in, to the same dealership.

Link: http://www.connpost.com/…
(via digg)

Billions of honeybees have vanished worldwide. Dubbed “colony collapse disorder,” this has serious implications for farmers who rely on bees to pollinate their crops. An initial but much-discredited report (link #2) suggested that cell phone radiation was responsible, but now scientists are looking at a fungal infection as the likely culprit.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/…
(via digg)