1 | The 28 Coolest Gadgets, Tools, & Technologies on Lost Jon Phillips 05/21/10 | "Lost" isn’t just a TV show. It’s also a complete, self-contained mythology that taps into the science and technology passions of hardcore nerds. The show overflows with interesting gadgets and gizmos, and with but one episode left, we’ve decided to celebrate our favorites. We created our list from memory, but researched the living bejezzus out of it on Lostpedia, the ultimate depository of "Lost" minutia. And by the way, if you’re interested in owning some of these gadgets, tools and technologies -- all lovingly created by the department of "Lost" prop master Rob Kyker -- you can ready yourself for the auction to be held by Profiles in History this summer. And now, without further ado, our favorite "Lost" tech gear, in order of increasing coolness. (And, if you liked this story, make sure to check out 16 Secret Lost References in Videogames on our partner site, GameRadar.com) | 2 | Cambridge researchers discover why laptops catch fire
2010-05-19 | We’ve all heard terrifying stories in the press and online about laptops, mobile phones, music players and other devices suddenly overheating and catching fire with no warning. This has been worrying not just for users but for manufacturers too and only last year Packard Bell recalled a number of laptops over concerns about batteries. The devices that caught fire were all using lithium batteries and until now no one has really understood why these batteries should rapidly overheat and catch fire. Now scientists from Cambridge University in the UK believe they have discovered a way to find out exactly what’s going on. | 3 | Quantum cryptography system hacked
May 20, 2010 | It is supposed to be absolutely secure – a means to transmit secret information between two parties with no possibility of someone eavesdropping. Yet quantum cryptography, according to some engineers, is not without its faults. In a preprint submitted late last week to arXiv, Hoi-Kwong Lo and colleagues at the University of Toronto, Canada, claim to have hacked into a commercial quantum cryptography system by exploiting a certain practical "loophole". So does this mean high-profile users of quantum cryptography – banks and governments, for example – are in danger of being eavesdropped after all? Quantum cryptography works because a system's quantum state cannot be observed without changing it. In the standard protocol, two users, typically known as Alice and Bob, openly share encoded information. They can only decode the information once they also share the secret quantum "key". But they will always know if another party, typically known as Eve, tries to eavesdrop on the key, because by observing it she will always change its state. | 4 | Air Force set to fly Mach-6 scramjet Layer 8
| The US Air Force said it was looking to launch its 14-foot long X-51A Waverider on its first hypersonic flight test attempt May 25. The unmanned X-51A is expected to fly autonomously for five minutes, after being released from a B-52 Stratofortress off the southern coast of California. The Waverider is powered by a supersonic combustion scramjet engine, and will accelerate to about Mach 6 as it climbs to nearly 70,000 feet. Once flying the X-51 will transmit vast amounts of data to ground stations about the flight, then splash down into the Pacific. There are no plans to recover the flight test vehicle, one of four built, the Air Force stated.
| 5 | Toyota’s Robot Violinist Wows Crowd At Shanghai Expo 2010
| | The Shanghai World Expo got a special treat this past week in the Japanese pavilion, when Toyota’s famed violin-playing robot thrilled the crowd with a rendition of the Chinese folk song Mo Li Hua (jasmine flower). The bipedal artificial violinist hasn’t been seen much since its debut back in 2007. It was one of several Toyota bots playing musical instruments at the 2010 Expo, but this line of "Partner Robots" is under development to eventually serve as personal assistants – being a musician is just a side line. You can see a great clip of the Toyota bot playing Mo Li Hua after the break, as well as its original rendition of Pomp and Circumstance from 2007. | 6 | LittleDog Learns Several Terrifying New Tricks
May 22, 2010 | | The last we checked in with LittleDog, the smaller, scrappier version of BigDog and frequent resident of my worst nightmares, we took some solace in the fact that he wasn't quite as nimble as his predecessor. Now: terrifyingly nimble! Yes, it's true. LittleDog, which is being developed at USC as part of Darpa's robot locomotion initiative, will now chase you across rocky terrain, over crevices, and up stairs of various heights. Any weaknesses we might've perceived in the initial videos of LittleDog have vanished and with them our hopes of ever resisting the RoboDog takeover. | 7 | Scientist Infects Himself with a Computer Virus [VIDEO] Barb Dybwad May 26, 2010 | The University of Reading’s Dr. Mark Gasson has an unusual distinction: He’s the first human to become infected with a computer virus. After corrupting a small electronic chip with the malware, the British scientist inserted the device into his hand and was able to pass on the virus to external systems. The chip itself uses a technology called RFID to send information back and forth. It allows Dr. Gasson to gain access through security doors and activate his cellphone — all of which still sounds odd and futuristic enough, though the technology has been used for applications as mundane as paying for drinks in upscale nightclubs already for years. The whole concept is admittedly a bit of a stunt, but it does address some of the issues we will start to face as implantable electronics become more prevalent. When you’re talking about putting a chip inside your body, "blue screen of death" takes on a whole new meaning, as do the potential consequences of hacking and malicious security breaches. | |