Talynebear

Comic by: Chris10a

Comic by: tennyjane

A man has implanted magnets into his ears to use as invisible headphones in a remarkable example of DIY transhumanism.

Rich Lee, a self-described transhumanist and body modification fan (or "grinder"), was inspired by a similar idea posted on the Instructables site that featured two small in-ear magnets stimulated with a magnetic coil necklace connected to an amplifier (you can see the video with this piece). The difference is that Lee actually implanted his inside his fleshy lobes.

The coil necklace is completely hidden by his clothing, and the scars from the implants are also unnoticeable, so it's unlikely you'd realize that as he was standing in front of you he could be listening to music. In a way it's reminiscent of the bone vibration Google Glass uses instead of conventional earphones.

Legal drama is nothing new for Apple—Samsung, e-books, App Store trademarks, etc. But the company has probably never seen anything like the 50-page complaint AboveTheLaw.com points out this week.

Plaintiff (and attorney) Chris Sevier filed the document (Scribd) against Apple in a US District Court in Nashville, TN last month. Sevier's beef with Cupertino boils down to a simple fact: it sells machines that allow people to view porn. From his introduction (all formatting, grammar, spelling left as is):

The Plaintiff loves Apple. The Plaintiff believes in Apple, as a company and knows that it has good intent. Since its inception, Apple has always been a pro-family company, Apple has always been an entity that is concerned with the welfare of our Nation's children, while furthering pro-American values. There is no reason for Apple, a private company to overly support pornography online, explicit sexual content which has led to the proliferation of arousal addiction, sex trafficking, prostitution, and countless numbers of destroyed lives. The Plaintiff respectfully demand that Apple sell all of its devices on "safe mode," with software preset to filter out pornographic content. If the purchaser of Apple's products is over 18, Apple should allow the buyer to take additional step to acquire a password from Apple in order to remove the filter to access Constitutionally protected indecent content. If the buyer is under 18, Apple should not provide the password.

Sevier is seeking damages and injunctive relief against Apple because it makes products that can display porn ("or as the rest of us call it, the Internet," AboveTheLaw notes). So Sevier legally requests that Apple enable a porn-filtering "safe mode" by default on its devices. His complaint notes that "If Apple agrees to sell its devices 'on safe mode' before trial, the Plaintiff will terminate this litigation."

Protecting rice today, powering your Prius tomorrow?

Photo by David Nance via Wikimedia

Next-generation high-capacity lithium-ion batteries could open doors to better electric vehicles and a multitude of other energy storage applications. To increase battery capacity, many researchers want to replace the carbon anode in today’s technology with a silicon anode that has the potential for ten times the capacity.

So far, attempts to design silicon anodes have struggled. Capacity drops off quickly with each battery cycle because the silicon swells as it charges and shrinks as it discharges, which can cause fracturing. Many researchers are seeking nano-structural solutions that will accommodate the material’s expansion, but a team of Korean scientists turned to what may be the most surprising source for high-tech electronics components—rice.

The husks of the rice grains, which are discarded as waste after harvest, are about 20 percent silica. The silica forms a layer that prevents attack from insects and bacteria but is porous enough to allow the transfer of air and water. Dae Soo Junga and team wanted to see if that naturally occurring nanostructure could solve the capacity fade problems that plague silicon anodes.

While America was looking forward to the July 4 holiday, the Russian space program was busy putting the final touches on its latest rocket launch. A Proton-M rocket carrying three satellites for the GLONASS navigation constellation (Russia's answer to GPS) launched on July 2, 2013 at 06:38:22 Moscow Time.

Just one problem: the rocket came crashing back down to Earth at 06:38:54—landing in a massive fireball. The crash marked another setback for the beleaguered Russian space program. There were fears that the massive quantity of propellant could leak, potentially creating a very toxic disaster for the local population. And there was no immediate explanation as to why the Proton-M failed so spectacularly, so fast.

But on Tuesday, Anatoly Zak reports on his own site, RussianSpaceWeb.com, that investigators have determined the culprit was the “critical angular velocity sensors, DUS, installed upside down.”

Put a few hundred hours into a game and you'll normally have its mechanics down pat. You may not be the greatest player ever, but you can usually expect to be at least competent and able to make a valuable contribution to your team's efforts. Sure, some teenager all hopped up on Mountain Dew and pubertal rage is still going to have faster reactions than you, but you'll get by.

Until you pick up Dota 2. In Dota 2 you can play for a hundred hours and still be the most useless n00b to ever play the game, a let down to your team, an embarrassment to friends and family. It's a brutal game. But if you get into it—and not everyone will—it can make a full-on heroin addiction look like nothing more severe than a mild hankering.

Before its "official" (though still limited, see sidebar) release this week, Dota 2 has been available for the last two years as an invitation-only beta, with beta keys randomly assigned to existing players. In this way, it grew organically as gamers gave keys to friends or sold them for inflated prices. Even with this limited availability and a learning curve that's almost horizontal (in that additional time doesn't actually gain you much additional skill), Dota 2 has become hugely popular. It's the biggest game on Steam, boasting more concurrent players than any other title on Valve's DRM and distribution platform, regularly breaking 300,000 concurrent players.

Comic by: (via Right Shift)

Comic by: Shashsqatch

The county courthouse at New Braunfels, Texas.

Larry D. Moore

On February 13, 2013, police say that a Texas 18-year-old posted the following messages to his own Facebook page:

“I’m fucked in the head alright, I think I’ma SHOOT UP A KINDERGARTEN”
“AND WATCH THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT RAIN DOWN”
“AND EAT THE BEATING HEART OF ONE OF THEM”

As a result, Justin Carter, now 19, is in a Texas county jail on charges of making a “terroristic threat.” Carter apparently made the remarks in response to someone who had called him “crazy” while playing League of Legends. The young gamer has been in prison since he was arrested in March 2013.

Comic by: Marksinator

Comic by: katweezel

Comic by: (via Cannabino Mad)

Submitted by: Unknown

Comic by: muttleythedog