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This is so very cool. I believe memory is the key to a worthwhile life. After all, what is the point of living if you can't remember anything?

The man, who has not been identified, was also tested on his ability to learn lists of paired objects. After three weeks of continuous hypothalamic stimulation, his performance on two learning tests was significantly improved. He was also much more likely to remember a list of unrelated paired objects with the electrodes turned on than when turned off.

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I know this is off-topic, but dang if it isn't cool.

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Video here

Picture propaganda here

Personally, I worry about power like that turned in the wrong direction, but while it's only focused on corrupt organizations, I have ho qualm.

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I'm not so sure we're ready to start messing with nature like this. It didn't work so well the last time, and that was just selective breeding.

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For what sounds like a scam if ever there was one, MissingMoney.com appears to be legitimate. The team over at Lifehacker have had a rush of successes listed in their comments after their first post of this service and having tried it myself, I was actually able to find an unclaimed rebate in my name!

I found a record with one of my old addresses and clicked the link they gave me. It led to Washington State's web-based unclaimed funds service.

I had to create an account with Washington state's unclaimed money department, but that was a simple process. There was a point where they ask for a SSN, but they give you the option of providing it offline (which I thought was a nice touch).

Afterward, they asked me to submit any kind of record that shows that I lived at that address (which I did) and it was a done deal. In theory, I should get my money in a while. I will update this page at that time. Of course, if you do this, make sure that you're not providing sensitive documents as proof (I think I sent a bill with account numbers blacked out or such).

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I've always thought this could be done though I figured it would have to involve a light electric field and a fabric of some kind. Either way, it's going to make it pretty easy for military types to sneak around at night.

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From the, "that's freaking brilliant!" department, someone figured out that there's a phone tone that means "vacant circuit", or in layman's terms, there's no phone here. When an automated dialer gets that, they erase the phone number from their records so they don't waste their valuable time and money (as if ours wasn't). So what he did was download the tone from the Internet and put it as the first thing on his answering machine.

As long as you don't belong to a school system or work for someone who uses auto-dialers, this is pretty cool.

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Information about the coming USB 3 format is now available. Of course it's far faster than the previous version (about 10 times as fast), but the important nugget is that the connector is backwards compatible with USB1 and 2. That means that you can plug USB 3 devices into older systems and you can plug your old devices into USB 3 solts. That's pretty cool.

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Historically, Sony has been on the losing end of format wars, but in this case, they appear to have won. Two of the major movie studios have decided to go with the Blu-Ray DVD format over the HD-DVD.

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This story of a couple who shined a green laser into the cockpit of a police helicopter is interesting. According to the article, they were just having fun flashing them into the sky like giant light-sabers (which sounds pretty fun to me). Unfortunately, it hit the cockpit of the helicopter which must have diffused and spread the light (or else this couple has some killer aim to be able to hit the retina of a helicopter pilot at 500 feet).

Sounds just like a CSI Miami episode I saw.