Results tagged “scary” from 60 Second Science

So I'm a technological optimist. By and large, I think that, ultimately, technology will solve all my problems. That is, of course, if it doesn't destroy the world first. Because, let's face it, science is kind of scary.

At the top of my list of things that frighten me (followed shortly by a super-flu that turns people into zombies) is the sort-of-fact that the Large Hadron Collider could spew out strangelets and turn the Earth into a black hole, summon aggressive time travelers from the future, or plop us into a mediocre sci-fi movie.

Thank the good lord Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho have their heads screwed on right. They've filed suit in a federal court in Honolulu to stop CERN from powering up the LHC until it's produced safety and environmental reports.

[Google News]

Continue reading 'Hawaiians sue to stop Large Hadron Collider / save the world' >

Actually, the chances for wiretapping immunity are probably a good deal higher. We mentioned the AT&T wiretapping scandal back in November with a handy-dandy introduction to the ongoing vote over granting telecom companies immunity from lawsuits for their complicity. Now it appears to be less of a scandal, and it seems like that whole voting thing may be winding down as well.

On Tuesday the Senate voted 68-29 to keep a provision in the current spy bill that would grant retroactive immunity to any of the network providers who happily looked the other way or encouraged the NSA to use their services to eavesdrop on American citizens.

For those of you interested in what your candidate thinks about science, you might want to take a gander at how they feel about tech: Obama voted to strike immunity, McCain to preserve it, and Clinton couldn't be bothered to show. Bush is pressing the House to follow suit.

Continue reading 'In this week's tech fright forecast: 50% chance of wiretapping immunity with potential breaks for net neutrality' >

Earlier this month, President Bush signed the classified National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 ordering the NSA to monitor the computers and networks of all federal agencies. While the directive makes it sound like the NSA is simply out to check up on its federal neighbors, the goal is significantly less creepy than the directive sounds--that's the way it usually works, though. Government computers have experienced a rise in attacks over the last year and a half with officials laying blame on Chinese websites for large attacks that targeted nuclear labs and defense contractors.

Of course, if your city's government employees are looking at porn 95-100 times per day, there's bound to be some security issues somewhere inside the Beltway.

Continue reading 'NSA to monitor the rest of the government; creepiness factor rises by 10' >

Criminal hackers have been taking over the utilities systems of various cities and then demanding money from them to turn the power back on.

"We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands," US Central Intelligence Agency senior analyst Tom Donahue told a group of international security experts from the utility industry last week.

No wonder my utility bills are all skyrocketing. It couldn't possibly be my freakishly cold Texas winter.

Continue reading 'Cold this winter? Maybe the hackers are stealing your power.' >

When are we going to learn? If we keep teaching robots how to walk and drink wine like us, they're eventually just going to realize that they don't want to be tools for amusement and the advancement of Japanese coolness. They're going to want ice-cold revenge, and it'll be our fault.

Dario Floreano of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology helped develop robots that can evolve to communicate with each other, help out, and even lie when necessary. He and his future-ruining cohorts outfitted robots with lights, sensors, and wheels and placed them inside habitats with "food" and "poison" hot spots that either recharged or drained their batteries. They were also programmed with 30 "genes" that determined how much light they sensed and how they would respond when they did.

In the next "offspring" generation of robots, Floreano recombined the "genes" of the fittest robots, plus a bit of random code to act as a gene "mutation." Four different colonies of robots were then released into their habitats to eat, reproduce and die.

Continue reading 'Robots learn to evolve and lie; next stop WORLD DOMINATION' >

Why, Britain? Why can't you be like your peaceful, privacy-protecting pseudo-neighbor Sweden? No, instead you have to and freak me right the hell out with news like this: Ministers are looking at the option of injecting prisoners in the back of the arm via hypodermic needle with "machine-readable" microchips that would be traceable by satellite or radio and carry information about the individuals' identities, addresses and offending records.

"All the options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue," a senior Ministry of Justice source told The Independent.

Continue reading 'UK proposes to implant prisoners with microchips' >

wait for it, wait for it...

This reptile was as big as a bus and had teeth larger than cucumbers, and if you watch this video, you can watch it attack! In particular, you can gasp as it devours an unsuspecting dinosaur and a more-unsuspecting soccer (excuse me, football) player who inadvertently wandered, with his ball, into the freezing waters of the Svalbard islands in Norway.

This slick little presentation came out of Norway, and it brings to life that new species of the 30-foot-long Pliosaurus that was first uncovered in the Arctic last year. Norwegian researchers announced on Tuesday that, in August, they found the 150-million year old remains of yet another specimen of the same species, but the new guy measures 10 feet longer than last year’s model. (While the remains are pretty well-preserved, I don’t think the skin made it. And don't go looking for its footprints...)

This carnivorous beast was one of the largest marine predators to live when our Earth was a giant Jurassic park.

Incidentally, today must be Giant Monster Day...

Continue reading 'For your consideration: One big, bad, marine MONSTER' >