It’s easy to get caught up in the news of the day (right this minute: Ebola epidemic, global economic instability), or the latest big tech announcements (slightly thinner and shinier gadgets) and miss some of the mind-blowing things that continue to happen all around us.

• Is This the Future of Robotic Legs? – perhaps a rare exception to Betteridge’s law, this article is a writeup on Hugh Herr’s biomechatronics work that’s pretty astounding.

  Here’s a recent TED talk:
  

• Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details (video and some more details) – Lockheed Martin has announced some details about some promising research in fusion tech. This requires appropriate skepticism, as nuclear fusion is one of those technologies that is continually over the horizon. There’s some discussions on HN and on talk-polywell (see also: sciencemag, popsci, thepolywellblog). There are currently a number of promising Compact Fusion Reactor projects going on. If any are successful, the implications will be world changing.

Since I’m posting links:

• Kickstarter Freezes Anonabox Privacy Router Project for Misleading Funders – followup to Privacy Router Anonabox Gets $600K in Crowdfunding—And Huge Backlash. I originally backed the anonabox but withdrew after seeing the Reddit thread/AMA. Here’s some good post-facto chatter on HN. Clearly, there is demand for a cheap, plug-and-play device that can help enhance your privacy. Hopefully a non-scammy team is able to raise money for that.
• /jherico/OculusRiftHacking – I’ve been traveling sans DK2/workstation, but have been doing some documentation/support work for building Open Source Linux DK2 drivers. @okreylos in particular has been on fire and has published code and done some fantastic summaries/writeups of the reverse engineering work.
• Using virtual reality to desensitize troops – speaking of VR, this should be unsettling…