The Pirate Bay raided, shut down by Swedish police – and it may never return

The Pirate Bay has been raided by Swedish police and shut down — possibly forever, according to its co-founder Peter Sunde. According to some initial reports coming out of the Sweden, Stockholm police seized computers and equipment belonging to The Pirate Bay, and have detained “at least one man connected to the site.” At this point, it’s unknown if the current operators of The Pirate Bay (TPB) plan to reopen the site — there were reportedly redundant Pirate Bay servers located in other countries, to mitigate against raids like this, but now we’ll see if that redundancy actually exists.

   As far as we can tell, today’s raid on TPB is a pretty standard case of copyright              law violation.TorrentFreak has a statement from Sweden’s chief intellectual property police officer, Paul Pintér, saying “There has been a crackdown on a server room in Greater Stockholm. This is in connection with violations of copyright law.” The previous raid on TPB, way back in 2006, was the same deal. Back then, the movie industry — the MPAA — was involved in the raid; it’s fairly safe to assume that commercial interests are behind today’s raid and shutdown, too.

Really, it was only a matter of time until The Pirate Bay was raided again; it’s one of the biggest websites in the world, with tens of millions of users — almost all of which are there to, in most jurisdictions, download stuff illegally. The shift away from hosting torrent files, in favor of magnet links, probably bought the site a little more time — but clearly, given today’s raid, the magnet links weren’t a complete panacea.

This morning, Pirate Bay’s co-founder Peter Sunde had some interesting remarks to make about the shutdown:

“News just reached me that The Pirate Bay has been raided, again. That happened over 8 years ago last time. That time, a lot of people went out to protest and rally in the streets. Today few seem to care. And I’m one of them. Why, you might ask? Well. For multiple reasons. But most of all, I’ve not been a fan of what TPB has become.”

Sunde goes on to talk about how TPB has “become an institution” that people took for granted. He hates the spam of “distasteful” ads that now blanket the site, and the site’s ugly design — but perhaps most tellingly, he is upset by how the site goes “against the ideals that I worked for during my time as part of TPB.”

Basically, The Pirate Bay was meant to be a breath of fresh air. It was meant to be some kind of vehicle for the ideology of the founders and its first users. Sunde even says that the original plan was to close TPB down on its tenth birthday — job done, it would be time to get out of the way and let other smaller, faster, fresher sites take over. Instead, The Pirate Bay has become this lumbering beast — an institution that millions of people idolize, an institution that is essentially a glorified Viagra ad.

Some new Pirate Bay mirrors are already starting to pop up, but they are probably not “official” — rather, they’re most likely just a cloned version of the original site, with many (but probably not all) magnet links still in tact. That isn’t to say that any Pirate Bay clones aren’t useful, but it probably isn’t fair to call them The Pirate Bay; they’re most likely just set up by people who saw an opportunity to raise some fat advertising revenues.

Sunde, for his part, hopes that The Pirate Bay is gone for good — and is hopeful for the future of file sharing. “From the immense void that will now fill up the fiber cables all over the world, I’m pretty sure the next thing will pan out. And hopefully it has no ads for porn or viagra. There’s already other services for that.”

The future of extreme e-sports: The gamepad that draws blood every time your character gets hit

n a rather chilling case of dystopian sci-fi made real, some Canadians have created a modified Xbox gamepad that draws blood from your arm every time your in-game character takes damage. According to the gamepad’s creators, the idea is to hold “blood donation gaming events” — to bolster blood bank reserves (which are always in short supply), and also to make gamers “think about more important issues while still doing what they love.” While this is ostensibly a rather noble effort, it’s hard not to see this as the first step towards extreme gaming and e-sports where losers actually die in real life.

The system, which is rather scarily called Blood Sport, is fairly simple in its design. Basically, the creators found an old blood collection machine, and then connected its pump to an Xbox 360 gamepad via an Arduino microcontroller. Every time the gamepad rumbles/vibrates, the Arduino tells the machine to draw some blood. The creators say their system should work with any console/gamepad that has the rumble feature, but they’ve only modified a single Xbox controller so far. Apparently the Arduino keeps track of how much blood has been drawn, so that no one dies.

Blood Sport – connecting the blood collection machine to the gamepad’s rumble/vibration mechanism

The next step, obviously, as it isn’t much fun to lose blood to an NPC, is to modify another gamepad and acquire another blood collection machine so that you can play against other people. Thus, Blood Sport turned to Kickstarter for funding. At the time of publishing, however, the project had been suspended — with no word from Kickstarter or the project owners as to why. Presumably it’s because Kickstarter simply found the idea a little bit squeamish — though I’m sure the site has crowdfunded lots of other weird projects over the years.

Here’s the promotional video for Blood Sport. It’s not particularly graphic, but if you’re not a fan of blood you may want to skip it.

So, for now, Blood Sport has been put on ice — but, fortunately (unfortunately?) such novel and convoluted ideas don’t just vanish. Now, for better or worse, the world is thinkingabout combining video games and blood collection. At the very least, such a system could be employed by real clinics to improve the allure of blood collection — speaking for myself, I would be much more inclined to donate blood if it involved fragging some Halo noobs.

Obviously, though, I think we should be much more interested in the potential for extreme and dangerous uses of the technology. There is a very, very fine line between charitable gaming and an e-sports tournament to the death. Imagine if the Arduino bugs out, and keeps drawing blood past the safety threshold. Or imagine an extreme e-sports league, where there is no safety threshold — where dying in Counter-Strike or Dota 2 actually hits you in real life, diminishing your abilities and increasing the likelihood that you’ll lose more and more blood until… well, you get the idea. Amusingly enough, maybe this would encourage gamers to physically exercise more, or to take a leaf out of other competitive sports and start using steroids and blood doping. (Or who knows, maybe e-sports professionals are already doing that?)

The future of e-sports?

I’m starting to get ahead of myself — but I think we can all agree that such a scenario, as worrying as it sounds, doesn’t seem too far beyond the realms of reality. Whether it’s VR, brain implants, bionic retinas, brain-computer interfaces (or even brain-to-brain telepathy), we are clearly moving towards a world where the once-clear divide between humans and their tools is blurred. Today it’s the merging of fun and games and drawing blood — tomorrow, it’s a generation of humans that have had an augmented reality device attached to their head since shortly after birth.

New superomniphobic texture made of nanoscopic nails repels all known liquids

If you have ever lived in a frequently rainy area of the world where the main mode of transportation isdriving, you’re likely very familiar with products like Rain-X. Rub some of it on your windshield, let it settle, and you can practically drive through a downpour without having to turn your windshield wipers on (though we wouldn’t recommend it). Rain-X is a superhydrophobic coating that repels water, giving you a clear view of the road ahead even when wipers can’t. Though superhydrophobic coatings can repel other liquids, its main focus is water, and as your white dress shirt is probably aware, water isn’t the only liquid that can spill. Engineers at UCLA have created a liquid repellent so much more effective than superhydrophobic coating that it’s classified assuperomniphobic — and it’s based on surface texture, rather than a set-and-forget coating.

On a cool, dewy morning, you’ll tend to notice beads of water sitting atop or rolling down leaves. Certain foliage is hairy on a microscopic level, which means the surface doesn’t have enough points of contact with water to soak it in, leaving the droplet intact thanks to its own surface tension. This is also why water beads up on a non-stick cooking pan. If you cook often, though, you’ll know that oil doesn’t bead up; it has a lower surface tension than water, and thus is more difficult to repel. Surfaces have been created that can deal with lower surface tension liquids, such as oil, but being able to repel liquids with an even lower surface tension, like fluorinated solvent — used for electrical cooling, for instance — has remained elusive.

Methanol beading on the new, textured superomniphobic surface

By covering a surface with thousands of microscopic flathead nails, UCLA researchers CJ Kim and Tingyi Liu have created a surface texture that can repel all known liquids. Each nail is thinner than the width of a human hair and placed just 100 micrometers apart, and each head measures in at just 20 micrometers in diameter. Every nail has a vertical overhang coming off its head, looking similar to a tablecloth hanging over the edge of a round table. The overhang buoys liquids by creating a cushion composed of about 95% air, preserving the liquid’s surface tension. The nails are fashioned out of our old friend silica — silicon dioxide; the same stuff that lays at the base of almost every computer chip ever made. [Research paper: DOI: 10.1126/science.1254787]

The UCLA-engineered texture repelled all liquids thrown at it, including oils, solvents, and even a solvent that has the lowest known surface tension for a liquid, perfluorohexane. Even better, the nailed texture can be applied to a variety of surfaces, including metal,glass, and polymers. Due to the surface being made of nanostructured nails instead of, for example, a coating, it’s tough and wouldn’t degrade from harsh temperatures, biofluid, or ultraviolet light.

The researchers have filed a patent for the creation, but need time to explore and perfect it. So for now, you shouldn’t expect to purchase a raincoat covered in the texture anytime soon. The texture exists, though, and can be applied to a variety of surfaces. It seems all the researchers need to perfect the material is time.

The new dynomak fusion reactor could make fusion cheaper than coal

What does “cost competitive” mean? Well, relative to prior fusion projections, a Dynomak facility could be built for about a tenth the cost of competing fusion reactor designs and produce up to five times as much power. This lets it catch up to the price-per-watt of coal, though only at the gigawatt scale; a 1GW Dynomak reactor might cost $2.7 billion, to a modern average of $2.8 billion for comparable coal plants. It’s all theoretical of course — this team has presented a major improvement to reactor design, but it will be up to larger, better funded research teams to actually make use of it. What’s the big innovation, then?Fusion is back in the news, and not just because Lockheed is claiming to have solved the world’s every problem with magical million-dollar truck-sized generators. Historically, fusion research was all aboutpossible strategies and mechanisms that might one day allow for controlled fusion; today, researchers are now at the point that they know specifically which breakthroughs must occur to make the technology viable — and, as always occurs in such situations these days, the upgrades have been coming in quickly. Several large, well-funded teams are competing to be the first to generate one net joule of energy from fusion, but an academic team from the University of Washington may be doing that work that ends up winning. They’ve dreamed up a new fusion power design called a Dynomak, and it could make fusion power stations cost competitive with coal.

The team’s test rig, called HIT-SI3, has only three “helicity injectors.” The final version, HIT-SIX should have, uh, six. Click to zoom in.

There are two (major) schools in fusion tech right now: magnetic and laser confinement. In both cases you have to shrink down a sample of your fusion fuel — usually a mix of hydrogen and helium — so it get super-pressurized and thus super-heated, beginning the fusion process, and in both cases we need incredibly fine control of our inward pressing force. Whether it’s a complex magnetic field or the combined force of trillions of watts of laser light, getting strong-enough and fine-enough control of confinement is undoubtedly the biggest hurdle facing consumer fusion tech. The University of Washington’s work could make that process far more economical. By wading into the mathematics of magnetic confinement, they may have negated the need for magnets altogether.

Here’s a basic cross-section of a spheromak rector. Note: still very complex.

Probably the most widely publicized design for a magnetic fusion generator is based on a tokamak, a huge, donut-shaped magnet. The precisely shaped magnetic field it creates has been proven to be capable of containing a fusion reaction (just not while using less energy than the fusion itself creates). The costs are also prohibitive, as with the test model for ITER’s 30,000 pound super-conducting Slinky which recently arrived. Just as we’re finding with MRI machines, super-cooled magnets are a limiting factor for fusion power, and so we then developed another design called a spheromak — a magnetic fusion machine that creates its confining field by running current directly into the sphere of plasma at the power station’s heart.

This is obviously a huge improvement to the tokamak, but as you might imagine, just pumping electricity into a sample undergoing fusion isn’t very precise. Spheromak designs had the theoretical advantage in cost and efficiency, but struggled to show that they could actually work. Then, two years ago, this University of Washington team published an idea called imposed dynamo current drive (hence “Dynomak”), a proposed model for predicting the magnetic field based on the injection of outside magnetic fields. This was hailed at the time as having huge implications for fusion power, and now we’re seeing some hard numbers to the effect. 

Here’s the tokamak at the JET fusion lab in the UK – a smaller version of the tokamak that will eventually be installed at ITER

Essentially, the Dynomak is a precisely controlled spheromak reactor that uses imposed dynamo current drive to control the magnetic field it creates. This means we might be able to keep heated hydrogen isotopes in one spot without having to leverage several national economies to do it, or further deplete helium reserves and kill the birthdays of tomorrow.

That’s great, but this team’s test rig is only about 10% as big as it ought to be and uses only three of the final six “helicity injectors” that make the Dynomak possible. Until a full-scale test run is conducted, this will be just another fusion fairytale. Still, given the incredible cost benefits we’d enjoy if it is correct, this seems like an idea very worth exploring.

2014 holiday gift guide: High tech futuristic gift ideas for geeks and nerds part 4

Futuristic gifts for the nerd who wants to be a cyborg

And finally, we come to my favorite section of the gift guide: gadgets and devices that will make you (or whoever you’re buying a gift for) feel like they’re not quite one of us — like they’re currently living in 2024, rather than 2014. I’m talking about technology that is so advanced that it changes how you perceive and interact with the real world. Tech that, for all intents and purposes, makes you transhuman.

At-home USB gene sequencer – $1,000. Due to advances in nanotechnology and microfluidics, DNA sequencing devices have got a lot smaller and faster over the last few years, ultimately resulting in the MinION USB stick, priced at around $1,000. With your genome sequenced at home — by your laptop! — you could theoretically proceed to develop your own gene therapies, to provide enhancements and modifications akin to comic book superpowers.

A ‘gamer’ wearing the new Foc.us tDCS headset

tDCS headset – $200. tDCS, or transcranial direct current stimulation, is a technique thatreportedly boosts your brain’s performance — both in terms of learning new skills, and faster reaction times. As you might imagine, this apparently makes tDCS rather powerful for gamers — or for people learning a new language, perhaps. If you want something that’s almost ready to go, the Foc.us V2 is probably your best bet. Most tDCS headsets require some amount of DIY self-assembly, however. Just like those magnetic ball bearings, don’t buy tDCS equipment for a child — and make sure you do lots of reading before you actually try it out on yourself.

Google Glass or Samsung Gear VR – $800 and up. Google Glass, which puts a small display above your right eye, is probably the closest thing we have to a working, usefulwearable computer that augments reality. They’re still reasonably expensive, but you can pick one up second-hand on Ebay for around $800. If you know someone who already owns the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, it’s worth looking at the Gear VR — a $200 attachment that turns the Note 4 into something close to the Oculus Rift. The Gear VR seems to be quite hard to find in the US at the moment, but I think it should be fully available before Christmas.

Body hacking – $???. Body hacking, and more generally quantified self, covers everything from wearing a Fitbit exercise tracker ($100) — which you wear as a wristband — to embedding computers like the Fitbit underneath your skin. For the ultimate transhumanist Christmas gift, you could arrange an appointment with Steve Haworth, a body modification artist who will do subdermal implants for other people. If Haworth isn’t available, your local tattoo parlor might offer similar services, too.

Obviously, you should think quite carefully about this one — though, to be honest, thanks to the recent popularization of subdermal piercings and other body modifications, it is fairlysafe to implant a computer under your skin. If you don’t want a computer under your skin, I’ve heard that simply having small magnets implanted in your fingertips can give you a rather awesome “sixth sense” — and allow you to pick up paperclips more easily, of course.

If you have your own nerdy, geeky, or downright futuristic gift suggestions — or if you’re a futurist or transhumanist yourself, and there’s something you’d love to receive as a gift this holiday season — let us know in the comments below

2014 holiday gift guide: High tech futuristic gift ideas for geeks and nerds part 3

Futuristic gifts for on the move

Over the last few years, by far the largest gains in computing have been in mobility — both in terms of smartphones and wearable computers, but also when it comes to electric vehicles, self-driving cars, and other weird personal mobility devices like the Honda Uni-Cub. Here are the best and most high-tech devices and gadgets from the world of mobility and mobile computing.

Tesla Model S – $70,000 and up. Yes, I know, it’s stupid to include the Model S on a Holiday Gift Guide, but… well, if I had really rich kids, I’d love to receive a Tesla for Christmas. Almost everyone agrees: The Model S is amazing to drive, and it has technology that is essentially unmatched by anything other than the latest Mercedes S-Class (which costs even more). The latest version of the Model S has some impressive self-driving features, too. Really, if you’re wondering what to buy the tech nerd who has everything, the Model S would probably hit the spot.

Aftermarket car head-up display – $100. For about $100, the Garmin HUD+ will project your speed, turn-by-turn GPS directions, and the current speed limit onto your car’s windshield. It’s not quite as functional as the integrated HUDs that some modern BMWs have, but it’s still pretty good — and safer than glancing at your smartphone, which requires you to refocus your eyes and/or look away from the road.

Siva Cycle Atom – $130. For the cyclists out there, the Siva Cycle Atom is essentially a modern bicycle dynamo that can recharge your USB devices while you cycle to work. TheCopenhagen wheel, which turns a conventional bicycle into a hybrid electric bike, is even cooler — but sadly it’s only available to pre-order at the moment.

The Cruise RP-1 self-driving car kit, on an Audi A4

Self-driving car kit – $1000. The Cruise RP-1 is an aftermarket self-driving car kit that is mounted on the roof of your car, and then integrates into your car’s computer to provide semi-autonomous driving (basically adaptive cruise control plus lane keep assist). There are two caveats, though: a) It only works with the Audi A4/S4 for now, and b) it won’t be commercially available until sometime in 2015.

Android Wear smartwatch – $200. While it’s still fairly early days for smartwatches, the first round of Android Wear devices are surprisingly useful — as long as you don’t mind recharging them every night. The Samsung Gear Live ($200) is probably the best of the first round of Wear devices — or if you’re willing to spend a bit more, the LG G Watch R ($300) is probably a better choice. Obviously, come next year there’ll also be the Apple Watch to contend with — but the jury is certainly out on whether it’ll be worth the exorbitant price tag (plus, it will probably require an iPhone nearby to be useful).

2014 holiday gift guide: High tech futuristic gift ideas for geeks and nerds part 2

Livescribe smartpen – $100 – $150. If you still regularly use a pen or pencil at the office — to take notes, for sketching diagrams — then you should grab a Livescribe smartpen, which automatically digitizes your scriblings and beams them to your computer. Version 3 of the pen ($150) requires an iPhone or iPad; if you’d rather pair it with your Windows or OS X laptop, you’ll need the previous-gen Livescribe Echo ($100). The Livescribe pens also act as an audio recorder/dictaphone, which can be rather handy.

Laser projected keyboard – $100. For around $100, you can now buy a semi-decentprojected virtual Bluetooth keyboard. Just like the early laser keyboards, these newer ones still aren’t all that great — they’re just not that accurate — but they definitely still have theooh cool factor. If you know someone who does a lot of typing on a smartphone or tablet, a projected laser keyboard could be exactly what they need to boost productivity at the office.

Neodymium magnets – $20. Neodymium is a rare earth element that can be used to make incredibly strong permanent magnets — like, so strong that you’ll struggle to pull two quarter-inch neodymium magnets apart. Sadly, ball bearing neodymium magnets are now quite hard to get in the US, but little cube magnets are still easy to obtain on Amazon. If you can find some Buckyballs (the spherical neodymium magnets), they make for a fantastic executive toy — but please, keep them away from kids.

WiFi-enabled coffee maker – $150. If you want to make sure that your coffee is always perfectly fresh when you go to the office kitchen, check out the Mr. Coffee WiFi-enabled coffee machine. It’s essentially just a normal percolator, but with a companion WeMo smartphone app (iOS and Android) that lets you set up a brewing schedule, or to simply turn the machine on remotely.

The Chairless Chair – $???. The Noonee exoskeleton, which attaches to your hips and shoes, allows you to sit down anywhere at any time — just sit back, and the exoskeleton takes the weight. Obviously, this would be amazing for anyone who spends a lot of time standing up at work. Sadly, it isn’t commercially available yet — it’s being trialed by Audi and BMW on its production lines — but it might be available in time for next Christmas.

2014 holiday gift guide: High tech futuristic gift ideas for geeks and nerds part 1

Futuristic gifts for the home

In the future, our homes will be fully automated, with heating and air conditioning systems that learn your preferences, refrigerators that automatically order your groceries, and other weird and fantastical gizmos that will be enabled by the arrival of the Internet of Things. While we haven’t quite arrived at truly smart homes, there are a few gadgets that you can buy for the house that will get you most of the way there.

Nest Thermostat – $250. The Nest Learning Thermostat is still the best, easiest, and cheapest way to give your home’s heating system a jolt of intelligence. If your budget extends a few hundred more dollars, you can also grab a bunch of Nest Protect smoke detectors, too, and have the whole thing networked together and accessible from any internet-connected device. It’s pretty cool to be able to set your home’s temperature when you’re at the office, or out and about with your smartphone.

HP Sprout all-in-one PC – $1900. If there are some kids in your household, someone with a particularly creative bent, or just someone who likes trying out new and weird gadgets,the HP Sprout is worth a look. The Sprout all-in-one PC has an odd appendage that sprouts out the top of the screen, which contains a projector, a high-res camera, and a Kinect-like depth-sensing camera, pointing down at a 20-point trackpad. It’s not cheap, but it’s most futuristic PC on the market today.

Myo gesture control armband – $150. While commercialized brain-computer interfaces are still a little ways off, the Myo is a Bluetooth-connected armband that lets you control your smartphone, smart home, or simply a PowerPoint presentation with hand gestures. The Myo reads the myoelectrical pulses that arrive at your arm muscles — so, if you waggle your fingers, the Myo can read those electrical signals and send a command to an attached device.

LulzBot TAZ 4 3D printer

3D printer – $500 and up. This year finally sees the arrival of reasonably priced, easy-to-use 3D printers. Starting at about $500 for a no-frills Printrbot, or going up to around $2000 for the latest LulzBot TAZ 4, maybe it’s time you started printing your own cups, cutlery, and other about-the-house doodads? In a few months, at-home 3D printers might even be able to print computer circuit boards using conductive plastic — so it’s a good time to get in on the 3D printing bandwagon.