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We often speak of material being used to conduct electricity , but what if underwear makers AussieBum—who’ve created underpants made from banana fiber—used carbon nanotubes as well? Think of the possibilities banana-derived electricity-conducting pants could bring you.

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Underwear Made From Bananas Hits Australian Shops [Science]

Japan may be famous for its bullet trains, but if China’s plans for a high-speed railway go forward, people could be zipping over from London to Beijing in under two days. The train would go on from Beijing to Singapore, and also connect to India and Pakistan, opening up the East to non-fliers.

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Chinese High-Speed Rail Project Will See Travel From London To Beijing In Just Two Days Possible [Trains]

It’s official, Valve’s digital distribution service Steam is coming to Mac, and bringing Left 4 Dead 2 , Team Fortress 2 , Counter-Strike , Portal , and the Half-Life series (along with Source) with it this April. But there’s more. Apparently, through Steam Play, gamers will be able to play supported titles (anything built on Source, it seems) on a PC (say, at work) then continue the game from the same point on their Mac (say, at home)

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Steam Comes to Mac, Offers Cross-Platform Gaming Free of Charge [Steam]

It’s possible that you’ve been reading reports of Microsoft’s body-capturing Project Natal with some skepticism, wondering, “how well can this cockamamie setup possibly work?” Well, going by this video of it perfectly tracking a guy breakdancing, pretty damn well. As best we can guess, Natal will be making its way to Xboxes sometime this fall . That means we’ve still got a good deal of waiting ahead of us, so every once in a while it’s nice to have a reminder of why we’re so excited. February’s reminder: this video of Natal perfectly tracking a dude dancing during the requisite playground ball demo game.

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Breakdancing Is No Match For Project Natal’s Sensors [Natal]

Yesterday the Department of Defense released a memo outlining the government’s first official policy for social media access by military personnel. Somewhat surprisingly, it gives them unrestricted access to blog, Tweet, poke and ping just like everyone else. Effectively immediately, Department of Defense personnel across the board, including civilian employees and troops alike, have full access to popular new media sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the rest

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New Pentagon Policy Lets Troops Overshare Like the Rest of Us [Socialmedia]

Details continue to trickle out about Lower Merion School District, their MacBook loan program, and the unsavory security practices they used to keep those computers safe. The latest: the school-supplied MacBooks were required for classes and students could not use their own personal machines in their place. Worse yet, it was impossible to disable the laptops’ iSight cameras and attempting to circumvent the school’s security software was grounds for expulsion. Yeeps.

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At Laptop-Spying School MacBook Use Was Mandatory, Tampering Grounds For Expulsion [Privacy]

If you love movies, you love The Criterion Collection . It’s as simple as that. So get excited, because the CC now has a channel on Hulu. As of right now, it only has the first six features from the Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman series, but more should be coming in the near future.

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Ohhh Baby: The Criterion Collection Comes to Hulu [Hulu]

Apple’s making life simpler for developers with iPhone 3.2 Beta 3 which makes it easier to develop universal apps by allowing devs to easily update “existing iPhone projects to include the necessary files to support” iPads. [ Apple ]

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iPhone 3.2 Beta 3 Simplifies Developing Universal iPad/iPhone Apps [Apple]

Oh Saturn, you keep being the prettiest planet of them all. Even while Cassini crosses your orbital plane, and your rings become proportionally thinner than a razor blade.

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Where Did Saturn’s Rings Go? [Image Cache]

The Sony Dash reminded us mostly of a really nice Chumby when we got to play with it at CES. Now when Dash launches in April, it’ll be a really nice Chumby that streams Netflix from your Queue. The device has a 7-inch touchscreen and provides access to over 1,500 apps from the Bravia Internet Video platform and from Chumby.

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Sony Dash Personal Internet Viewer, Now 100% More Netflix Streamy [Sony]