Point: As my fellow Jalopnik readers would agree, the thought of an au-to-MO-bile running on some coffee beans is equally laughable and insulting. Counterpoint: As my fellow coffee drinkers would agree, this is an utter disgrace to our holy bean.

Countercounterpoint: Carpuccino? Really?

A while ago we read that coffee-based biofuels were feasible. Knowing the internet as we do, we figured it was only a matter of time before somebody took that novel possibility and turned it into an absurd reality. We were right! The Carpuccino, a 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco modified to run on ground coffee, will drive 210 miles between Manchester and London in the coming weeks.

The trip will require over 150 pounds of coffee, with the car getting a mileage of roughly 1.4 miles per pound. The vehicle can hit speeds of 60mph, though the trip could take as long as ten hours, as the car has to stop every 60 miles to clean out its coffee filters (seriously).

The joke on wheels was built by the BBC1 show Bang Goes The Theory as a reminder that unconventional fuels can power vehicles. Sidebar: the Carpuccino's trip will cost up to 50 times as much as it would if it were running on gas.

All that being said, I think we can agree to set aside whatever qualms we may have with the Carpuccino in light of its similarities, aesthetic and otherwise, to Doc Brown's Mr. Fusion-equipped DeLorean from Back to the Future II.

Espresso? Where we're going we don't need espresso. [Daily Mail via Green Diary]

Nvidia posted a preview video of the GTX 480, their eyeball-popping, face-melting Fermi graphics card that is set for release "very, very soon." It bests ATI's HD 5870 in a benchmark, though maybe not by as much as you'd hope.

As Tom Petersen, Nvidia's director of technical management, explains in the video, the GTX 480 shines when it's tessellation time. During the tessellation-intensive parts of the benchmark, Nvidia's card outpaces ATI's considerably, though at other points they're neck and neck.

It seems obvious that Nvidia would choose something that really played to the GTX 480's strengths for its video debut, so we're hoping that the card lives up to our expectations for insane speeds when it shows up in the wild and people start running their own tests. [YouTube - Thanks Doug]

We've come across plenty of robots that were controlled by phones before, but usually those phones were being controlled by human hands. Some California hackers, however, are building bots that harness Android for their robo-brainpower.

Their first creation, the TruckBot, uses a HTC G1 as a brain and has a chassis that they made for $30 in parts. It's not too advanced yet—it can use the phone's compass to head in a particular direction—but they're working on incorporating the bot more fully with the phone and the Android software. Some ideas they're kicking around that wouldn't be possible with a dinky Arduino brain: face and voice recognition and location awareness.

If you're interested in putting together a Cellbot of your own—can you even conceive of a cooler dock for your Android phone? Or a better use for your G1?—the team's development blog has some more information. The possibilities here are manifold; mad scientists, feel free to share your Android-bot schemes in the comments. [Wired]

Image credit Miran Pavic / Wired.com

Costing just a cent to produce and requiring just a single drop of blood to function, this paper chip, designed by chemist George Whitesides, can diagnose HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and more. What substance makes this tiny marvel possible? Comic-book ink.

The water-resistant ink pushes the blood into the different paper channels, each of which contain chemicals that react with the blood and change color to indicate the presence and severity of the various diseases.

In developing countries where technology for diagnosing diseases needs to be cheap and easy for individuals to use themselves, it's hard to imagine a test simpler than Whitesides' "zero cost diagnostics". The Harvard chemist presented his idea at a recent TED conference and summarized it in a video for CNN:

In his presentations, Whitesides explains how the paper tests could be produced cheaply in great numbers by inexpensive wax printers and proposes that individuals could send their results to doctors with cheap camera phones. Solutions for third world problems are often weighed down by their ambition and complexity, but the advantages of Whitesides' work rests in its simplicity. [CNN via PopSci via Inhabitat

This week's New York Times Magazine looks at China's human-flesh searches, a widespread practice in which "netizens" systematically track and harass individuals ranging from adulterers to corrupt local officials. But the searches tread a fine line between justice and revenge.

To anyone familiar with 4chan, its hard to imagine internet vigilantes residing anywhere besides the darkest corners of the web. In China, however, human-flesh search engines are a common occurrence, occupying a central role in the nation's internet culture.

The human-flesh searches are "not just a search by humans but also a search for humans"—humans that have in some way incurred the wrath of the anonymous bulletin board mob. One target, in an act of undeniable cruelty, killed a kitten on video (she was publicly shamed and forced out of her job). Another was singled out after criticizing the government's response to the Sichuan earthquakes (she was publicly shamed and forced out of her University).

This is where things get sticky. When, if ever, is it OK for the anonymous masses to dole out punishment for wrongdoing? What offense warrants this type of "public harassment, mass intimidation and populist revenge," as the article suggests it can quickly become. It's easy to see how a group could feel like they had the right to take retributive action after seeing a kitten killed on video, but it's much harder to make a case for searching out an anonymous dissident.

As the article points out, the rest of the world tends to fixate on issues of censorship when they consider China's internet culture. But reading about human-flesh search engines and their prominence, it seems like the internet activity that's not being censored is just as interesting. [New York Times Magazine]

Image credit Kai Hendry

In 2006, a NASA spacecraft returned to Earth with samples that scientists hoped might contain cosmic dust, a byproduct of star formation. They let the public look for the elusive particles online. A squinting citizen might have just found one.

The particles in question are pieces of interstellar dust, a substance containing atoms formed during the birthing of the sun and our neighboring planets. Don Brownlee, a researcher at the University of Washington, likens the dust to a "library of what was in the early solar system."

You would assume that the first cosmic dust would be discovered in a laboratory by some crazy-haired scientist, but the distinction may go to a Canadian man named Bruce Hudson. Hudson was a participant in Stardust@home, a program that anyone with an internet connection use a virtual microscope to scour the samples for these particular particles. Scientists are currently analyzing Hudson's find and are "cautiously optimistic" that it is the first cosmic dust ever to be returned to Earth.

If Hudson's particle is indeed interstellar dust, the discovery could give unprecedented insight into the formation of our solar system and the processes by which our universe recycles its materials. It also goes to show that armchair astronomers can really make significant scientific contributions.

So good work, Bruce Hudson. Now get busy on SETI@home. [BBC via PopSci]

This is upsetting. A South Korean couple was arrested for starving their baby to death, reportedly only feeding him once a day after marathon sessions at an internet cafe. What was keeping them so busy? Their other, virtual baby.

Yeah. The couple, who met on the internet (warning sign?), dutifully raised a young girl named Anima in the virtual world of Prius Online, a sort of South Korean Second Life. Not so dutifully raised was their real daughter, a prematurely born infant who only received powdered milk feedings as an afterthought following her parents' 12 hour days at the local internet cafe.

Twelve hours of virtual escapism a day is probably unhealthy in and of itself, but when its taking the place of your real responsibilities, well, it's probably time to log off. [CNN via BoingBoing]

This man is tightening a mold in a Samsung factory in Kaluga, Russia. Inside that mold is a portion of what will soon be a television. Let's take a tour of the rest of the factory.

Samsung opened this particular factory in 2008 and its been putting out products ever since. Aside from quality inspections, it appears that from the moment components arrive in gigantic sacks from Korea nearly everything is automated in this factory—from hot plastic being piped into molds to microcircuits being produced to the little logos being stamped onto panels. Humans mostly oversee the production and yes, occasionally tighten molds. Guess we're still needed for something. [English Russia]

Mindflex, the brandwave-detecting game, will probably give you a headache no matter what. But Harcos Labs decided to take it further, with a hacked Mindflex that shocks you when you concentrate too hard. The result: science, and hilarious shock videos.

The original Mindflex headset indicates how hard you're concentrating with a series LEDs. But with a little ingenuity and an electroshock kit, the devilish geniuses at Harcos turned it into something of a torture device:

Harcos hooked up the leads of the LEDs to a transistor/resistor relay network so they'd instead activate an electric-shock kit made by QKit. The end result? Concentrate a little, and you'll get zapped a little. Concentrate hard, and you'll get an electrical pulse that will make you think you've wandered onto the set of Green Mile.

Of course, the more worried you are about getting shocked, the higher the voltage. Which is cruel. And unusual. And so much fun to watch. [Wired]

First, man made the analog clock. Then he made the digital clock. Then, just because he could, he made the funky cross between the two that looks like a digital clock but has moving mechanical parts like an analog one.

Art Lebedev, the patron saint of cool concepts that will never be manufactured as real products, has applied his unique genius to the world of timekeeping. The result is Segmentus, a clock that uses swinging plastic segments to replicate LCD-style numbers.

OK, the numbers aren't always the easiest to read—this is particularly annoying for those of us who thought that digital clocks would always be a safe harbor in the confusing and often embarrassing world of analog timekeeping—but, hey, it's art. Er, Art. [Art Lebedev via SlashGear]

While he was talking about cloud computing yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a casual remark about the future of the Xbox. Apparently there might be new form factors, options, and price points coming:

In the case of the TV we've got both strategies. We actually have a TV implementation in some senses built into Windows," Ballmer said. "It works really well for small screen TVs that you might call a PC, but for that big screen device here's a piece of hardware that we build, there's no diversity. You get exactly the Xboxes that we build for you. We may have more form factors in the future that are designed for various price points and options, but we think it's going to [be] important.

This doesn't give us a timeline or even any actual details, but at least it fuels speculation about all the things we desire and may get at some point. [GearLog via CrunchGear]

The Maldives, a small nation consisting of 1,200 islands is gradually disappearing as sea levels rise. In an attempt to save the place, their government has signed off on the development of several "floating facilities" like this one.

Dutch Docklands/Dutch Watervalley, makers of many floating homes, are the starry-eyed folks working with the Maldives government on this project and they intend on creating tiered—and yes, star-shaped—mini-cities which won't be bothered by rising sea levels.

There doesn't appear to be a timeline for the project yet, but I'm assuming they'll get around to completing it before the entire nation disappears. [Inhabitat]

The funeral for Internet Explorer 6, one of the older members of the Microsoft family, was a pleasant affair with only a few protestors. Unfortunately representatives of the family were unable to attend and sent flowers and a note instead:

Thanks for the good times, IE6. See you all @ MIX, where we'll show a little piece of IE heaven.
-The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft

IE6's funeral arrangements—right down to the photographer— were made by design company Aten Design Group. They actually made it into a rather decent looking event:

Rest in peace, IE6. Even if we were enemies half the time. [Flickr via TechCrunch]

Google's shopping spree continues. This time they've picked up a company called DocVerse, whose software will eventually allow seamless interoperability between Google Docs and Microsoft Office. That's right, Microsoft... the call is coming from inside the house.

You can already store and share Office files through Google Docs, but DocVerse adds the functionality of letting users collaborate directly on Office documents. As the crowing Google Blog puts it:

DocVerse is a small, nimble team of talented developers who share our vision, and they've enabled true collaboration right within Microsoft Office. With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications.

Current DocVerse users won't be affected, but you won't be able to sign up for a new account until Google figures out exactly how they're going to incorporate the company. Of course, Microsoft was moving Office to the cloud on their own anyway; it's just that it'll be a bit more crowded there than they'd thought. It's official, though: even productivity software is a battleground now. [Google Blog via TechCrunch]

There are lamps that excite me and there are lamps that I couldn't care less about. Then there's this chandelier designed by Robert Kaindl, glass artisan extraordinary, which looks like it would stab me if given the opportunity.

For once, I'm scared to turn on the lights. [Design Milk]

Every year, Hanover, Germany hosts hordes of tech journalists, analysts, and PR people for CeBIT. It's like CES, sort of, except further away, and more boring. We decided not to go this year; it ends tomorrow. Here's what we missed!

To be clear, these were some of the bigger stories of the conference, at least for American audiences. We've written a few other CeBIT stories up as well, which you can find here, but by and large, the event just sort of came and went. So, this is what was happening over in Hanover this week, while the rest of the tech world was going about their business.

Pierre Cardin Tablet: Wikipedia tells me that Pierre Cardin is a "Italian-born French fashion designer" who is famous for his "space age" clothing designs. He's paired up with a small Taiwanese OEM to make a tablet—the old foldy kind, not the slate-like new kind. It's pink, and it will cost $450, if it ever hits stores in the US.

ASUS EeeTop ET2010PNT and ET2010AGT On the exterior, ASUS EeeTops are basically a budget take on the AIO concept you're familiar with from the likes of the iMac and HP's Touchsmarts. On the interior, as with most ASUS products, they're incomprehensible parts soup.

Shuttle I-Power External GPU: Breaking news, for people who would like to buy a box that's nearly the size of a netbook and which can help boost their notebook's graphics capabilities! (But only certain notebooks, because you need a special adapter!) The Shuttle I-Power External GPU is ready to accommodate your fantasies.

1Cross B'ook ereader: Entourage eDGe on a budget: The first step here is to try to remember what the Entourage eDGe is. Now that you've done that, the second step is to figure out why you care about this cheaper, gaudier, and somehow less practical take on the same concept.

Intel Atom for Storage Devices: Intel's Atom processors, traditionally meant for netbooks and cheap laptops, are about as unglamorous as tech products get. I'd even hold that this was true five minutes ago, which was before I'd even heard about the Intel Atom for storage devices, which is a special version of the platform for household and small business network storage devices.

New Intel Classmate: Intel's ultra-budget Classmate convertible tablet PCs are evolving! (Slightly!) Here is the reference design for the newest one, which is quite similar to earlier reference designs on the outside, but adjusted slightly for cost and performance reason on the inside.

LG 12x Blu-ray drives: Did LG not have 12x Blu-ray writers before? Are these just new versions of their old Blu-ray devices? Such are the mysteries of CeBIT, which could easily be solved, if anyone cared enough to Google for backlinks.

ASUS O!Play USB 3.0: We're big fans of the ASUS O!Play set-top boxes around here and we're not very slightly more enamored with the concept, now that it supports USB 3.0.

At the Hanover zoo, an orangutan must pull a succession of strings before being rewarded with a nut. Sometimes, the experience gets a bit frustrating:

We've all been there, buddy. We've all been there. [Telegraph via Animals don't think...][Image by Rex Features]

German researchers are working on mobile phone technology that would convert silent mouth movements into speech. It's an ingenious way to have a noiseless conversation, but if they don't get it right there could be some unfortunate mix-ups.

The tech—developed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology—involved uses electromyography, and measures the electrical potentials generated by muscle activity in the face to translate mouth movements into speech. You'd be able to speak silently, but the person on the other end of the line would hear what you were saying loud and clear.

Of course, lip-reading is an inexact science—even more so, I would imagine, when implemented by a machine. So while you'll be able to share PIN numbers without sharing it with the whole room, you'll want to proceed with caution on more intimate conversations. [Cellular News via Dvice]

Rockets made of bacon, a song about bacon, broken windows, and beeping smoke detectors. I could not think of a more wonderful experiment. Here's how it was done.

Please don't try this at home. I refuse to be responsible for any damage. [Thanks, Jess!]

Apple's lawsuit against HTC made one thing clear: Steve. Jobs. Will. Cut You. And with all the patents they've got? Nobody's safe. Here's who's next on the subpoena warpath:

Patent #8,567,301: A Process to Cryogenically Microbead Pasteurized Dairy
Defendant: Dippin' Dots

Patent #5,475,939: Inexpensive Self-Assembled Home Furnishings With Names That Sound Like Lesser Norse Gods
Defendant: Ikea

Patent #6,374,752: Constructing an Opulent Hyper-Futuristic City Without Having the Resources to Maintain It
Defendant: Dubai

Patent #3,405,356: Music Composition Utilizing Three Chords In Sequence and Repetitive Anti-Establishment Lyrics
Defendants: Joey Ramone; Iggy Pop; Johnny Rotten; et al

Patent #2,366,291: How a Bill Becomes a Law
Defendants: Congressional and Executive Branches of US Government; "School House Rock"

Patent #4,769,002: Placing "I" Before "E" (Excepting Those Occasions In Which Preceded By "C" Or When Phonetically Comparable to "A")
Defendants: Strunk and White; My Third Grade Homeroom Teacher; the English Language

Patent #9,753,482: Achieving Fame Despite Lack of Discernable Talent or Drive
Defendants: Paris Hilton, Spencer Pratt, the Cast of "Tool Academy," et al

Patent #1,749,682: Dogs
Defendants: Dogs