LarsonsWorld -- just another persons /dev/null

Six Ways Investments in Space are Paying Technology Dividends on Earth -- Popular Science

Each time NASA gets a new budget from Congress, a recurring debate takes a spin through a media cycle or two. At its simplest this conflict of opinion is a split between people who think Americans give NASA too much money and those who think it’s not enough. There are the more nuanced arguments too, those that hinge on specific line items and whether or not a specific program or ambition is worth it (or not worth it). But all the noise can largely be distilled into a question that looms ever larger in the current age of austerity: is what we’re getting out of NASA worth what we’re putting in? Is space science a good investment?

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Revolights inventor lights the way for safer cycling -- CNET

Kent Frankovich's design, which makes it easier for cyclists to see and be seen, is a spin on the good old-fashioned bike reflector.

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Nov. 29, 1972: Pong, a Game Any Drunk Can Play -- Wired

If fire was the beginning of civilization, was the appearance of Pong the beginning of the videogame age? A case can be made.

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Latest Stats Say We're Building a Fatter, Slower Web -- webmonkey

Thanks to a diet of ever-richer JavaScript files and more sophisticated CSS, web pages are fatter than ever. If bandwidth speeds and browser improvements can't keep pace tomorrow's web may end up slower than today's.

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Digital Holdout Ray Bradbury Brings Fahrenheit 451 To E-Readers -- Wired

Very few new e-book editions warrant their own press releases. But just one novel about the end of printed books has sold 10 million copies in print alone.

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Researcher shows how to "friend" anyone on Facebook within 24 hours -- Ars Technica

If there's any doubt how social networks have presented hackers with a wealth of social engineering tools, a Brazilian security researcher recently demonstrated how he could "friend" even allegedly more wary Facebook users in less than 24 hours. At the Silver Bullet security conference in São Paulo, UOLDiveo chief security officer Nelson Novaes Neto showed how he leveraged LinkedIn, Amazon, and Facebook to convince a target—a Web security expert he called "SecGirl" using social engineering.

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Technology once protected our privacy, now erodes it -- Ars Technica / Wired

In light of the erosion of privacy online, we need to be careful to protect our privacy at home, according to Michael Birnhack, law professor at Tel Aviv University, speaking at Intelligence Squared's If conference.

In direct contrast to Martin Blinder's argument in favor of personal analytics, Birnhack said: "Yes we can measure stuff, but do we want to measure all that stuff? I would argue that at least some of us would like to maintain a place where nothing is measured and nothing should be measured."

Toilet technology targets boredom -- BBC News

A UK design team has devised a urinal-mounted games console, which it hopes will relieve men of boredom across the country.

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I don't think I could hold it long enough to play a game while I'm peeing ...

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Web Tracking (But Were Too Paranoid to Ask) -- PC World

Who is tracking you online and what do they want? The answers aren't obvious. Take this quiz to learn how much you know about Web tracking.

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How Google's Self-Driving Car Works -- IEEE Spectrum

Once a secret project, Google's autonomous vehicles are now out in the open, quite literally, with the company test-driving them on public roads and, on one occasion, even inviting people to ride inside one of the robot cars as it raced around a closed course.

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Hey, it has to make the roads safer for us bicycle commuters ... humans drivers are just rude anymore!