Las Vegas might not be the ideal place to try and build a technology hotbed, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. As I reported previously, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is investing an impressive amount of money — $350 million — to help revitalize the city’s urban core and create a community of tech startups, and he already has some key pieces of his puzzle in place. And while it’s easy to be skeptical of Hsieh’s grand vision, the companies that have moved … Read More → "For startups, Las Vegas is a beautifully clean slate"

Oxford Nanopore says it will begin selling by the end of the year a disposable DNA sequencer about the size of a USB memory stick that can be plugged directly into a laptop or desktop computer and used to perform a single-molecule sensing experiment. The device is expected to sell for $900, according to the company. 

The company also unveiled a larger benchtop version of the technology. It says a configuration of 20 of the benchtop … Read More → "DNA sequencing to go"

Gorgeous. via uncrate

More here

Keeping dress shirts looking crisp while traveling is hard. The Shirt Shuttle (£30; roughly $50) makes it easy. This simple travel helper features a curved-edge folding board to ensure that your shirt remains uncreased, and a lightweight, water-resistant case that’s specially formed to keep your collar looking great, and includes inner pads to help minimize creases and an integrated hanging hook. Keeping the rest of your wardrobe looking nice is up to you.
via < … Read More → "Don’t you hate showing up with a wrinkled dress shirt?"

There’s nothing like vintage toys to take us back to days gone by, and there’s nothing like vintage robot toys to take us back to nerdy days gone by. One toy collector, known in his small circle as Mr. Mercury, is a vintage nerd tour de force. He’s been collecting toys of all kinds for a long time now but caught a special interest in robots about … Read More → "A vintage toy robot website for the nostalgic berd in all of us"

via Kottke

… Read More → "Snowboarding in an LED suit"

If you can claim to be a data scientist and have the chops to back that up, you can pretty much write your own ticket even in this tough job market. A quick search of the popular job posting sites –Indeed.com,SimplyHired.com, or Dice.com – shows a huge demand for data scientists or anyone who can demonstrate other “big data”skills.

The reason? Companies in all industries now understand that they need to make better sense of the massive data sets at their disposal — … Read More → "Big data skills bring big dough"

From heart monitors to cooking thermometers, almost any piece of tech seems to be equipped with Bluetooth and an accompanying smartphone app these days. Now it looks like even the simplest of items can get their own high-tech upgrade, as evidenced by Beam Technologies’ upcoming Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush. The Beam Brush will monitor a person’s dental hygiene using sensors that sync with an app, which will then track that data and … Read More → "Beam toothbrush reports your brushing habits to a smartphone via Bluetooth"

In an unprecedented move, the FBI may cut off Internet access to millions of people on March 8th to try to rid the country of a Trojan. Millions of computers are infected worldwide—maybe even yours.

The DNSChanger Trojan originated in Estonia and might be lurking undetected on as many as a half-million computers in the United States, according to Brian Krebs. It has been found on … Read More → "The FBI might cut off the internet for millions of people on March 8th"

Patent trolls are the worst. Oh wait, no, out-of-control copyright crusaders, they’re the worst. In fact, the whole intellectual property system needs a total overhaul. But why? How did it come to this? Kirby Ferguson’s sublime Everything Is a Remix series comes to a conclusion with this really smart explanation of how the spirit of IP laws have been totally perverted by modern corporate culture.
via Gizmodo

Read More → "Everything that’s wrong with patent and copyright laws in one brilliant video"