President Barack Obama reportedly asked Steve Jobs what it would take to bring iPhone manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. to which Jobs replied, “Those jobs aren’t coming back.”

The exchange, according to a Jan. 12, 2012 report in the New York Times, occurred in Feb. 2011 at a dinner in Silicon Valley. The late Steve Jobs was right. Even though advances in automation, 3D printing, and the rising … Read More → "The future of U.S. manufacturing: Nanotech, 3D printing, and self-aware factories"

Among the attendees of South by Southwest in Austin are a smattering of homeless people wearing T-shirts that proclaim “I am a 4G hotspot,” and for a user donation one of them will stand next to you while you check your email or do whatever else you need with the connection. Read Write Web has a good story outlining the “social experiment” by BBH-Labs.
via GigaOM

Read More → "Using homeless people as a walking broadband connection"

When you listen to stereo speakers, you always hear both channels with your two ears. Headphones don’t have that problem; the left channel is only heard by the left ear, and the right channel only by the right ear. That’s why stereo sounds smaller over headphones, and of course it’s all, or mostly, in your head.

And once the sound is there, the headphones’ job is done, but with speakers you’re always hearing the speakers’ sound, plus the sound bouncing around the room. The closer you are to … Read More → "Which is better…headphones or speakers?"

Cool!

All-Spec Industries contacted us about a biodegradable anti-static bag they’re selling for the same price as regular anti-static bags. They have the same properties as the normal non-biodegradable anti static bags, only these degrade within 9 months and don’t pollute the planet. We have a pile of plastic part bags sitting around from Mouser and Digikey orders that we save for storing projects,  it would be great to know … Read More → "Biodegradable anti-static bags"

Do you like video games? Do you like having a brain that can do stuff? Then this infographic is just for you! As it turns out, gaming has an effect on your brain, and it’s not “turning it into mush.” As I am sure many of you know first hand, gaming generates happiness in awesomeness lobe and then moves it to your soul, or at least that’s what it feels like. This infographic from Online Universities goes a little deeper into the subject and deals with a few of the other things involved in addition to … Read More → "The neurology of gaming"

Fusion is the way our sun powers itself. It’s clean, it’s efficient, and all you need is hydrogen, which we’ve got a bunch of stashed away in the ocean. We’ve been having trouble making fusion happen here on Earth, because we don’t have any suns lying around to do it for us, but this could be the year where we make it happen, efficiently, with giant lasers.
</ … Read More → "This could be the year we break even with laser fusion"

Repairing and refueling satellites robotically may seem rather mundane, especially when compared with moon landings, Mars rovers and the Hubble space telescope, but NASA’s two-year Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) experiment, now underway on the International Space Station (ISS), turns out to be surprisingly complex. Designed to demonstrate that servicing working satellites with remotely-controlled robots is a feasible option, NASA, in conjunction with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), initiated the first of several RRM … Read More → "NASA begins robotic refueling mission experiment"

Researchers at Microsoft have made software that can learn the sound of your voice, and then use it to speak a language that you don’t. The system could be used to make language tutoring software more personal, or to make tools for travelers.

In a demonstration at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus on Tuesday, Microsoft research scientist Frank Soong showed how his software could read out text in Spanish using the voice of his boss, Rick Rashid, who leads Microsoft’s research efforts. In a second demonstration, Soong used his software to grant … Read More → "Software that translates your voice into another language"

One day I’m sure everyone will routinely collect all sorts of data about themselves. But because I’ve been interested in data for a very long time, I started doing this long ago. I actually assumed lots of other people were doing it too, but apparently they were not. And so now I have what is probably one of the world’s largest collections of personal data.

< … Read More → "The personal analytics of Stephan Wolfram’s life"

One of my favorite books of all time is Jonah Lehrer’s Proust Was a Neuroscientist, which tells the story of how a handful of iconic creators each discovered an essential truth about the mind long before modern science was able to label and pinpoint it — for instance, George Eliot detected neuroplasticity, Gertrude Stein uncovered the deep structure of language, C& … Read More → "Jonah Lehrer on why science and art need each other"