JetLib News

Today’s theme is defending the planet. We earthlings are pretty proud of our armaments. But would we be able to defend ourselves against extraterrestrial threats?

We’ve had some close calls already.

Foreign Policy takes stock of the Pentagon’s planetary defenses.

We’re still just digging into our home territory. Our rovers on Mars are picking up creepy shadows.

Our plans to send people to Venus haven’t panned out.

But our latest moon missions are running ahead of schedule. Will we spot threats in our solar system in time?

Well, we’d better look harder. Here’s a video of a two-meter chunk of asteroid blowing up in our atmosphere just a few weeks ago. Close call!

It’s all a moot point anyway, of course. Our galaxy will collide with its neighbor in 4 billion years, and that will be all, folks.

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Past entries from Read/Write Daily

Today’s theme is bad news. Let’s face it: Tech news tends to describe the world through rose-colored glasses. Things are kind of hairy out there.

Here’s a round-up to remind us of the challenges we’re facing.

“How bad is it?“, George Scialabba asks. Pretty bad, as far as our educational and moral fabric is concerned.

Our Dan Frommer reports on the latest wave of tech layoffs, punching a hole in the industry’s veil of happiness.

Our economic reality is hurting us. Matthew Yglesias reports that long commutes are disastrously unhealthy.

Some of the news lately is downright crazy. Did you hear about the brutal attack on Miami, where a guy was eating another guy’s face?

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the list of terrorists to kill is getting so long that the administration has to draw straws.

A fire on a 22-year-old nuclear submarine has called into question whether we should even bother fixing it.

Real worries about global meltdowns are starting to bubble up. Fortunately, they’re based on some faulty assumptions.

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Past entries from Read/Write Daily

Today’s theme is R&D. Even in seemingly calamitous times, there’s still mind-boggling technological progress rolling out. It hasn’t saved the world yet, but some pieces are falling into place.

Look at these new inventions and imagine the possibilities.

Fox News (sorry) reports on a new scientific ghost town, the Center for Innovation, being built in New Mexico to test the next generation of everyday technologies.

Here’s the press release from Pegasus Global Holdings, which is financing the project, to get a sense of the ambitions.

Many of our next decade’s inventions will be made out of superstrong, light materials like graphene. To make things out of graphene with precision, it looks like we’ll have to use microscopic robots!

We’ll also need renewable power supplies for our inventions, and new kinds of solar cells are showing some promising efficiency ratings.

Our future technologies will have to be much cleaner than our present ones. Researchers are building artificially intelligent robotic fish (!!!) to help with the clean-up.

Speaking of artificial intelligence, here’s a great essay about why human intelligence is overrated.

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Past entries from Read/Write Daily

Today’s theme is movers and shakers. How about some straight-up tech news for once? There’s a lot of interesting maneuvering going on right now, and since RWW doesn’t tend to report on rumors, this seems like a good opportunity to round up some of the stories we’re watching with interest.

For all we know, these could be major headlines tomorrow.

Pocket-lint has a “man in the know” who thinks that Facebook might be poised to buy Opera Software, which makes the speedy Opera mobile browser.

Robin Wauters at The Next Web connects a few more dots on that story.

Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea for Facebook insiders to dump so much stock immediately after the IPO.

Chris Ziegler has a great scoop on The Verge: HP’s Enyo team, the core of what’s left of WebOS, is going to Google.

On the television front, NBCU is reportedly thinking about buying back MSNBC.com, which it sold to Comcast last year.

Groupon is testing a payment system to compete with Square and PayPal, according to Rocky Agrawal at VentureBeat.

Image via Shutterstock.

Past entries from Read/Write Daily

Today’s theme is wild technology. We homo sapiens-type people are proud of our technology, but we’d better give credit where credit is due. Lots of other species can literally eat us without having to invent any weapons to help them.

Some can even outsmart us.

This rich infographic goes into depth about the amazing eyes of some of the world’s hardiest species.

Here are six animals that are so smart, it’s creepy.

Namit Arora contemplates the inner lives of animals in this intriguing essay.

Japanese scientists have invented a “dolphin speaker” that may enable us to communicate with our marine counterparts.

Maybe we should learn a thing or two from the animal kingdom. Rachel Armstrong has put a new spin on Arthur C. Clarke, arguing that “any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from nature.”

But just to put us in our place, here’s a two-minute supercut video of animals seriously messing with people.

Image via Shutterstock.

Past entries from Read/Write Daily

Today’s theme is star power. We Earthlings think we’re pretty powerful. Sometime’s it’s healthy to look around the galaxy (or at other nearby galaxies) and remember that we’re just riding the waves of vastly more powerful forces.

Let’s hope our own star stays calm for the time being.

Astronomers have recently observed superflares on sun-like stars, more than a million times more powerful than the ones our Sun spits out.

Here’s video of an intense solar flare our Sun shot at us today.

In just three days, the Sun will be eclipsed by the moon, and the west coast of the U.S. will have a great view.

Our solar system must be special. It might be harboring whole planets we still haven’t discovered.

But in the grand scheme of things, we’re still a speck. The most powerful black holes can shut down nearby star formation before solar systems even get a chance to develop.

We’re luckier than we realize. Look what happens when galaxies eat each other.

Image via Shutterstock.

Past entries from Read/Write Daily

Today’s theme is improving on life. Nature did a pretty good job of engineering some hardy life forms. But now we’re able to tinker with life ourselves.

We’re further along than you might think.

Researchers have lifted the lid on turtle evolution, a perfect demonstration that technology is natural.

But now we have our own genetic ideas. We’re able to triple the physical endurance of mice in the lab.

This paper shows that high-resolution prosthetic human eyes are possible!

Here are slightly and greatly more accessible articles about these bionic eyes.

We’ve also developed low-cost artificial leaves that perform photosynthesis, a leap forward for sustainable energy.

This is as much a work of art as science, but check out this video of “FaceForward,” a robotic face sculpture shown last year at Burning Man.

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Past entries from Read/Write Daily

Today’s theme is do it yourself. You know that saying, “If you want something done right… ” Well, sometimes the status quo won’t bring the future fast enough, so fired-up people have to do it themselves.

Even if that means building space stations.

As U.S. government support for its space program wanes, NASA is making legal room for entrepreneurs who want to take over.

These new private space companies are teaming up to build whole space stations.

The European Space Agency is looking for asteroids and other “space hazards,” and amateur astronomers have volunteered their help.

On the Web, companies want to serve us our future by monetizing our information. Maybe we’d have a better future if we became our own platforms.

What happens if we don’t do it ourselves? We lose control. We get driven around by robots…

… and we have to watch out for zombie drones.

Image via Shutterstock.

Past entries from Read/Write Daily