The US military is funding the research and development of a weapon that could be used to inflict excruciating pain from up to two kilometers away, but is meant to otherwise leave victims unharmed.

McDonald’s said on Thursday it is looking into using remote call centers to take customer orders in an effort to improve service at its drive-throughs.

Customers of a German supermarket chain will soon be able to pay for their shopping by placing their finger on a scanner at the check-out, saving up to 40 seconds spent scrabbling for coins or cards, bosses say.

Lawrence Lessig:
You’ll be pleased to know that communism was defeated in Pennsylvania last year. Governor Ed Rendell signed into law a bill prohibiting the Reds in local government from offering free Wi-Fi throughout their municipalities. The action came after Philadelphia, where more than 50 percent of neighborhoods don’t have access to broadband, embarked […]

On March 29, the entertainment and technology industries will descend upon Washington, D.C. to argue their respective sides before the Supreme Court in the landmark case of MGM v Grokster. At stake: the future of peer-to-peer technology, consumer electronics, software design, and consumer rights in the United States.

Pressing buttons and wiggling joysticks could become a thing of the past with Nintendo’s new game console - which lets you stroke, poke, rub and even talk to it.

Charles Townes, who received the 1964 Nobel Prize for inventing the “maser” and paving scientists’ path to its now-ubiquitous descendant, the laser, will receive the $1.5 million award — the world’s best-known religion prize — from the Duke of Edinburgh in a ceremony to be conducted at Buckingham Palace in England on May 4th.

To combat a shrinking population, a small town in northern Japan has decided to give a cash award worth about $9,600 to each female resident who has a third child.