MIT

Angst over robot jobs is picking up steam, writes Peter Nowak

Aaron Swartz was charged under a 1984 Internet law

Certificates for a “modest fee”

Canadian schools have a plan to staunch the flow of engineering grads lured south by prestige and salaries

SixthSense promised to be the closest thing to Minority Report technology

Students defy the laws of physics—just to prove their school is better than yours

Students turn to their laptops for free online courses from Ivy League scholars

If you’ve ever felt guilty about harming the planet, Swiss artist-inventor Annina Rüst has invented just the right Christmas gift for you. According to the New York Times, this translucent leg band monitors how much electricity you use, and once you’ve gone over your threshold, the wireless device inflicts physical punishment and slowly drives six stainless-steel thorns into the flesh of your leg. The pain caused is “therapy for environmental guilt,” Rüst told the New York Times. Apparently, she modeled her “personal techno-garter” on the spiked bands worn by the ultra conservative sect of Catholic monks Opus Dei.

Within three years, skyscrapers might be powering our homes. A team from MIT has been figuring out how to make solar cells cheap and small. They’ve come up with a type of paint that concentrates the solar power and directs it to a solar cell. They predict that the new dye could be applied to existing buildings, like skyscrapers, so you could retrofit a building into a solar generator without even changing the glass. Once applied, you’d have to tack on a few solar collectors and voila…instant electricity.