Old-School Keyboard Makes Comeback Of Sorts – ” Almost all keyboards made since the early 1990s are, frankly, no good. A tiny group of writers and hackers know better. They use vintage IBM keyboards. Ugly, built like tanks, and, most importantly, with a spring under each key, and which clicks when you press it…” – Video explains the mechanism

How to cut through the marketing gimmicks of Sealy, Serta, and the rest – “Here’s a fun game I play. First, I walk into a mattress store and ask what’s on sale. Then, I throw my hands in the air and shout along with the salesman, “EVERYTHING’S ON SALE!!!!” Oh how we laugh, the salesman and I. And while he’s still chuckling, I turn around and walk out, because I fricking hate mattress salesmen…” (we are looking for a new mattress)

The Real AIG Scandal, Continued! – “The transfer of $12.9 billion from AIG to Goldman looks fishier and fishier…” See also: CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS from 1999.

The Internet in a box – “If you had to store three petabytes of data and keep it online for the entire Internet community, and you wanted to save space and energy, what would you do? For the Internet Archive, the answer was simple: Put the data in a Sun Modular Datacenter (Sun MD) equipped with Sun’s Open Storage technology…”

Canada Survey: File-Sharing the ‘New Normal’ – “In contrast, only 3% agree with the music industry’s position that file-sharers “are criminals who should be punished by law,” and only 25% feel say “technology should be developed to stop this.” “

The Pirate Bay to roll out secure €5 per month VPN service – “Those behind The Pirate Bay have introduced IPREDator, a VPN service aimed at keeping users anonymous and safe from being tracked by law enforcement. The service is slated for launch at the same time as the Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), which will make it easier for content owners to directly target suspected copyright infringers with lawsuits….”

Fallout 3 crowned videogame of the year – “Post-apocalyptic adventure “Fallout 3″ has been crowned Game of the Year at a major gathering of videogame makers in San Francisco….”

NASA Creating Online Multiplayer Video Game – “Maybe most of us will not have the chance to explore space like the astronauts in real life, but now NASA seeks to change all of that with the development of a massively multiplayer online exploration game called Astronaut: Moon, Mars, and Beyond. NASA has selected three development studios to work on the project – Project Whitecard, Information in Place, and Virtual Heroes – the last of which did work on America’s Army….”

Three-minute pizza gets a heavy topping of scorn from Italy’s chefs – “Backed by a Dutch investment company, he developed his “instant pizza” vending machine, due to come on to the market in Italy in the summer…”

Smart Dew. 25 cent sensor can detect intruders up to 50 meters away. Cost Effective US-Mexico or Israel Border Control – “A new invention from Tel Aviv University — a network of tiny sensors as small as dewdrops called “Smart Dew” — will foil even the most determined intruder. Scattered outdoors on rocks, fence posts and doorways, or indoors on the floor of a bank, the dewdrops are a completely new and cost-effective system for safeguarding and securing wide swathes of property…”

“Whatever Happened to…?” – “The odd fates of 25 legendary tech products that are forgotten…but not gone…”

Video: GE bringing 3D HD baggage screening to airports – “Certain airports have already taken the whole “walk through the metal detector” thing to the next level, but things are about to get stepped up once more thanks to TSA certification on a new product from GE Security…”

Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre – “One day Teuber began tinkering with a new theme for a game: an uncharted island. In his original vision, players would slowly discover the island by flipping over tiles, then establish colonies using the indigenous natural resources. The game incorporated elements of other ideas Teuber was working on, but for some reason this one seemed special. “I felt like I was discovering something rather than inventing it,” Teuber says…”

Mathematical formula for love accentuates positive, eliminates negative – “COUPLES wondering if the love will last could find out if theirs is a match made in heaven by subjecting themselves to a mathematical test…”

High-powered mathematicians take on free will – “The gist of it is this: They say they have proved that if humans have free will, then elementary particles — like atoms and electrons — possess free will as well…”

Magnetic Spin to Revolutionize Medical Scanning – “A novel method of transferring magnetic spin can amplify the sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) a thousandfold, according to new research from the University of York in the United Kingdom. Scientists say the leap could be as revolutionary for medicine as the development of MRI was 30 years ago…”

Mythbusters Get More Bang for Their Buck – “The Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters, who usually tape Alameda, went about 85 milies north to Yolo County for an “experiment”, and ended up with a bigger bang than expected. The channel’s resident geeks were trying to literally “knock the socks off” a mannequin by igniting 500 pounds of ammonium nitrate near the model. But the explosion was a lot bigger than they expected…”

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