Two leading European consumer groups — the UK's Which? and Germany's Stiftung Warentest — have published an advisory with the results of their lab tests on the security of kids' connected toys, warning that these toys are insecure and could allow strangers to listen in and talk to your kids over the internet.

Steve Jurvetson (of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson) posts this photograph of himself with "the true Armstrong hero," on the occasion of the late astronaut Neil Armstrong's birthday — which was yesterday, August 5, same as mine! From Steve's post:

At Kelly's house, I had the chance to ask him a question about the first landing on the moon that provoked a response that seemed poignant and awe-inspiring.

Venture capitalist, photographer, and master-level space fanatic Steve Jurvetson has been digging in to his archives for snapshots and relics related to the life and legacy of the late astronaut Neil Armstrong. For instance: above, a vintage 11"x 14" X-ray of Armstrong's lunar EVA spacesuit boots dated 7-7-69, only 9 days before the launch. — Read the rest

Photo: urban don.

Landlord says no pets? End-run the rulebook with a robot. Isn't this fellow, hacked out of a child's toy by the awe-inspiring Don Pezzano, just adorable? But perhaps mutant Furbies are not to your taste. There are, of course, alternatives.

This may be the largest Klein bottle (lovely multilingual dissonance there!) ever made. Klein bottles are basically Moebius strips with one extra dimension — bottles that have one continous volume without any "inside" or "outside." This Klein bottle was made by Cliff Stoll (who wrote the classic true-cybercrime thriller The Cuckoo's Egg) who runs the Acme Klein studio in the East Bay. — Read the rest

I'm working on a novel right now in which scroungers build exciting new devices out of really high-tech toys that failed to sell — the favorite being an Elmo doll from 2008 called "Boogie Woogie Elmo" that can learn to dance by watching you (this turns out to be a great tool for clustering: install Linux on five or ten of them, teach them to speak and hear several rudimentary commands, and they can drive a car as a cluster of homeostasis-seeking cellular automata). — Read the rest

Fascinating Australian Broadcasting Co science piece on the latest research in neuron production:

we do know a couple of things that stimulate brain cell production. One of them, of course is anti-depressants, which we now know probably the key molecule by which this acts, because we've been able to purify these cells that make neurons and we know what are the receptors that bind molecules.