Light Start – Space Whisky, spider drones, tech POTUS, WiFi allergies and internet troubleshooting
Brett Venter
Orbital whisky is now a thing, thanks to Ardbeg’s ISS experiment
What happens to whisky if you send it into space for a couple of years? Enquiring minds want to know, purely for scientific reasons. Ardbeg, a company that makes single malt whisky on a small Scottish island, sent some up to the International Space Station in 2011 and the whiskey returned to Earth a year ago. It’s taken a year to get the results (whisky is serious business, especially in Scotland) but Ardbeg have given some background on the differences they’ve noted between the Earth control sample and their space-whisky. And we’d like to know what those differences are – for scientific reasons. Honestly.
Why, yes, we would like to fund a mechanical spider actually
We know a few people with really crippling arachnophobia and it wouldn’t be a great idea for them to see this pitch video hoping to find an open-source, Ubuntu-powered, app-tweakable, spider-drone. That description speaks to our nerdiness on so many different levels. The Spanish team behind this drone, Erle Robotics, are looking at raising $50,000 for mass production of the spider (on IndieGoGo) and we can actually think of a few casual uses for one of these…
The American presidential race could do with John McAfee, to inject a bit of ‘sanity’
If you know who John McAfee is, then you know that he is known for several things. Anti-virus software, for one, but also being slightly… eccentric, especially on YouTube. With guns. He’s also about to be known for running for President of the United States, entering a field already populated by the best circus act seen since Barnum and Bailey. McAfee will reportedly be running for president as part of the ‘Cyber Party’ and while we’re not expecting one of the oddest (prominent) fellows in tech to win, we’re going to be watching just in case we get to see McAfee in a debate with Donald Trump. What a day that would be…
Could you really be allergic to WiFi at home or at work?
Can we answer that with a single word? Not conclusively, but the words ‘Probably not’ are very accurate in this case. But that hasn’t stopped someone from claiming that electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS – whatever the hell that is) can be made worse by the proliferation of WiFi… er… everywhere. And being given compensation for a WiFi allergy. Does science agree with that? Nope. Did the courts in France? Yup. We’ll stick with the scientist fellows, they have white lab coats and bunsen burners with two speeds /eddieizzard.
What to do when that relative just won’t go away (or your own internet connection has gone kerplooey)
First of all, we don’t talk about the image above. Second of all, there’s a problem with being known as the person who is handy with tech. Since you’re reading Stuff, you are that person. The problem is that when you’re ‘handy’, you’re called on to uninstall toolbars, remove viruses, clean a cooked rat off a CPU cooler’s fins (true story), that sort of thing. And then there’s the dreaded internet connectivity diagnosis over the phone. But there’s an option for that last one, you can hit up MyBroadband‘s quick and dirty troubleshooting guide, print out a copy for tech of the technologically impaired people in your life and get them to figure it out. Most of it, anyway, before you implement the actual solution. It won’t help with rat removal though, sadly.
