An anonymous reader writes “We’ve heard this one before, over and over again: pirates are the biggest spenders. It therefore shouldn’t surprise too many people to learn that shutting down Megaupload earlier this year had a negative effect on box office revenues. The latest finding comes from a paper titled: ‘Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Researchers Find Megaupload Shutdown Hurt Box Office Revenues
Most of the attention surrounding 3D printers in medicine has focused on patching up our outsides, whether it’s making skin to heal wounds or restoring the use of limbs . The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine has just detailed a technique that could go considerably deeper. By mixing natural gel put through an inkjet printer with thin and porous polymer threads coming from an electrospinner, researchers have generated constructs that could be ideal for cartilage implants: they encourage cell growth in and around an implant while remaining durable enough to survive real-world abuse. Early tests have been confined to the lab, but the institute pictures a day when doctors can scan a body part to produce an implant that’s a good match. If the method is ultimately refined for hospital use, patients could recover from joint injuries faster or more completely — and 3D printers could become that much more integral to health care. Filed under: Science , Alt Comments Via: Gizmag Source: Institute of Physics
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Hybrid 3D printer could fast-track cartilage implants
If you’re tired of the standard doorbell sound, you can mod your wireless doorbell to play any sound you like by utilizing a $12 Radio Shack 9V recording module . More »
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Add a Custom Ringtone to Your Wireless Doorbell
A Slashdot post from Samzenpus rounds up links to a series of projects to make self-filling water-bottles inspired by the hydrophilic nodules on the Namib Desert Beetle. After a successful prototype, MIT has launched a competition to improve on the design. Water Bottle Fills Itself From the Air
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Competition to design a hydrophilic, self-filling water-bottle
An anonymous reader writes “A court in Hamburg, Germany, has granted an injunction against a user of the anonymous and encrypted file-sharing network RetroShare. RetroShare users exchange data through encrypted transfers and the network setup ensures that the true sender of the file is always obfuscated. The court, however, has now ruled that RetroShare users who act as an exit node are liable for the encrypted traffic that’s sent by others.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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“Anonymous” File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Illegal By German Court
If you read Lifehacker you’re probably familiar with Tim Ferriss , the best-selling author and human guinea pig who will do just about anything to make life more efficient and acheive his goals. In his new book The Four Hour Chef Ferriss shares with corporate weblog Business Insider his key to learning skills as diverse as body hacking, business development, and amassing languages with his four step system: Deconstruct, Selection, Sequencing, and Stakes. More »
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Use Tim Ferriss’ Four-Step Process to Master New Skills
Three years ago, MAKE published Charles Platt’s book Make: Electronics , which I consider the best book on learning electronics I’ve ever come across. As Gareth Branwyn, the editor of the book said, “we decided to make it our mission to create a book that would patiently guide readers into the world of electronics in a way that was fun, clear-spoken, graphical, and experiential.” (Disclosure: I’m the editor in chief of MAKE, so I’m biased). Now Charles has a new book, which could be considered a kind of companion volume to Make: Electronics . It’s called Encyclopedia of Electronic Components . It’s the first of a forthcoming three-volume series of fact-checked reference guides to electronic components. This first volume covers power sources and power conversion: batteries, fuses, buttons, switches, relays, resistors, potentiometers, capacitors, transformers, power supplies, motors, diode, and transistors. Like Make: Electronics , the Encyclopedia of Electronic Components is a clearly written and lavishly illustrated introduction to electronics. While Charles’ first book covered the basics of electronics and electronic circuits, his second book explains what components are, how they work, and how they are used. It’s meant to be a reference, but I enjoyed reading it from start to finish, because I don’t know much about components, the wide variety of each kind of component, and what they’re used for. Charles also dedicated the book to me, and I’m honored that he did. Encyclopedia of Electronic Components
According to Wired, the secret to success in the field of programming is facial hair. Notable exceptions include women, of course, and Mark Zuckerberg. Of course, it may also be because those who are the best at what they do can get away with wearing their hair any way they like in the workplace. IT workers fall into different facial hair categories, some of which are shown here. There are twenty types of beards and/or mustaches illustrated in all, so if your profession is not represented here, you can see the rest at Wired. Link (Image credit: Kelsey Dake )
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A Field Guide to Tech Facial Hair
Hugh Pickens writes “Richard Anderson reports on BBC that despite stringent carbon emissions targets in Europe designed to slow global warming and massive investment in renewable energy in China, coal, the dirtiest and most polluting of all the major fossil fuels, is making a comeback with production up 6% over 2010, twice the rate of increase of gas and more than four times that of oil. ‘What is going on is a shift from nuclear power to coal and from gas to coal; this is the worst thing you could do, from a climate change perspective,’ says Dieter Helm. Why the shift back to coal? Because coal is cheap, and getting cheaper all the time. Due to the economic downturn, there has been a ‘collapse in industrial demand for energy,’ leading to an oversupply of coal, pushing the price down. Meanwhile China leads the world in coal production and consumption. It mines over 3 billion tons of coal a year, three times more than the next-biggest producer (America), and last year overtook Japan to become the world’s biggest coal importer. Although China is spending massive amounts of money on a renewable energy but even this will not be able to keep up with demand, meaning fossil fuels will continue to make up the majority of the overall energy mix for the foreseeable future and when it comes to fossil fuels, coal is the easy winner — it is generally easier and cheaper to mine, and easier to transport using existing infrastructure such as roads and rail, than oil or gas. While China is currently running half a dozen carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects — which aim to capture CO2 emissions from coal plants and bury it underground — the technology is nowhere near commercial viability. ‘Renewed urgency in developing CCS globally, alongside greater strides in increasing renewable energy capacity, is desperately needed,’ writes Anderson, ‘but Europe’s increasing reliance on coal without capturing emissions is undermining its status as a leader in clean energy, and therefore global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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The World Falls Back In Love With Coal
This Thanksgiving, cooking a turkey in an oven or deep fryer just isn’t as impressive as some of the alternative methods out there — such as cooking with a flashlight. [Read more]
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Watch high-powered flashlights cook a turkey