HD copy protection may have been busted

What’s purported to be the “master key” that protects Blu-ray and other HD content has been published online. But even if it is genuine, it’s debatable how much practical difference there will be. A poster on the Pastebin site, designed for easy sharing of text and code, has published what’s billed as the HDCP master […]

Chattanooga Choo-Choos to Gigabit Broadband

The city of Chattanooga has beaten Google to provide a 1 gigabit broadband service. But while Google is planning to one day offer such services at rates comparable to “regular” broadband, the Chattanooga deal is available today for an eyewatering $350 per month. The service comes from the publicly owned Chattanooga Electric Power Board and […]

A Telepathic Wheelchair

A new neuroprosthetic interface – that is “it reads minds without drilling into skulls” – is being tested by scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Federal De Lausanne’s Institute of Bioengineering. The practical application – one can now pilot an electric wheelchair using only one’s mind – brings a new type of mobility to the fully […]

DARPA wants to build a learning computer

Hello, Professor Falken. DARPA is a division of the U.S. Department of Defense tasked with developing new technology for use by the military. Their most famous project was called ARPAnet, which eventually became the Internet. They define the term “scary smart,” and while some of their technology trickles down to the civilian sector, most of […]

Time controllers have (leap) second thoughts

One of the geekiest moments of any year, the leap second, may be under threat. The International Telecommunications Union, the organization that governs global communications issues including how computers deal with time, is calling for feedback on the idea of dropping the practice. The leap second is designed to correct the disparity between the rigid […]