BY KYLER GEOFFROY

A weekly round-up of the best tech, science, and geek-related news from around the web.

 Space X CEO Elon Musk reiterates the importance of establishing a human colony on Mars. “I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary…in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen, in which case being poor or having a disease would be irrelevant, because humanity would be extinct. It would be like, “Good news, the problems of poverty and disease have been solved, but the bad news is there aren’t any humans left.”‘

 Microsoft has finally unveiled it’s next operating system – Windows 10. The OS is a hybrid of the tablet-like Windows 8 and the more traditional Windows 7 and isn’t being called Windows 9 because some speculate Microsoft is trying to distance itself from the notoriously user-unfriendly Windows 8.   

 Check out this cool video of Disney using blank fondant and projection mapping to create one of the coolest cakes ever for one lucky couple’s Fairy Tale Wedding.

 Check out the Olive – the Fitbit-esque bracelet that helps you manage your stress levels by having it track and analyze your physical indicators and habits that contribute to the strain of life.  

 A Google Glass app that provides real-time closed captioning for everyday conversations. 

 Speaking of Google, the company is reportedly developing displays that can connect like Legos to form one big, seamless picture. 

 Hacker puts Windows 95 on a smartwatch…just because. 

 A DIY Survival Guide for a zombie apocalypse. 

 A NASA-backed study looks into the option of putting astronauts into a deep sleep (or “torpor”) during a human expedition to Mars. “Economically, the payoff looks impressive. Crews can live inside smaller ships with fewer amenities like galleys, exercise gear and of course water, food and clothing. One design includes a spinning habitat to provide a low-gravity environment to help offset bone and muscle loss.” 

 It’s all led up to this – Jimmy Fallon vs Tyler Perry in a drone battle. 

 The best places to trade-in your old phone for an iPhone 6. 

 Check this out: Alcatraz reimagined as the lavish fortress home of a powerful tech mogel. 

 The world’s first genetically modified babies will graduate high school this year. 

 Education, military and 3 other areas that will be transformed by 3D printer technology. 

 NASA has revealed details of its mission to redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon and send humans to explore it in the 2020s. 

 A visualization of the ebola spreading rate compared to HIV and other diseases. 

 Lost showrunner Carlton Cuse thinks the show’s return is “inevitable” – “It’s like the Narnia chronicles. There are [seven] books, they were all written by CS Lewis, but they all visit Narnia at different times and different configurations and different ways. Someone is going to come up with a way to tell another Lost story. I think it’s inevitable. I don’t know what it is or how it would work, but I can’t imagine something else won’t be done with the franchise.”

 Researchers discover Egypt-sized cyanide cloud over Saturn’s largest moon Titan. 

There’s a special place in hell for Anita Bryant for helping to popularize the myth that the gays are after the world’s children to recruit them to the cause, like some fabulously well-dressed militant regime. This fueled one of the cries – and lies – spread ’round the world that people and governments are anti-gay because they just want to protect the children. We’ve seen it in Russia, the U.S., and of course Uganda.

The “protecting the children” rational is a lie through and through, of course, and Uganda at least is proving it to be as such. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni claimed that he signed on to his country’s viciously anti-gay laws to ostensibly protect children and prevent them from being “recruited” into the deviant homosexual lifestyle, but either he never really believed that or the “recruitment of children” isn’t that big of a deal as Museveni is now backtracking on those laws.

Though the author of the anti-gay laws said that any international backlash would be “worth it“, President Museveni is singing a different tune, saying that his country could endure aid cuts, but that trade boycotts would be devastating:

It is about us deciding what is best for our country in the realm of foreign trade, which is such an important stimulus for growth and transformation that it has no equal.

He still takes a chance to make a nasty stab at homosexuals and still blame them for his country’s troubles, however:

It is now an issue of a snake in a clay cooking pot. We want to kill the snake, but we do not want to break the pot. We want to protect our children from homosexuality, but we do not want to kill our trade opportunities. That now forces us to disassemble this whole issue.

How about just leaving the snake alone, knowing that it always was and always will be a snake, and letting everyone live in peace?

The anti-gay Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom (a group whose efforts promoting bigotry abroad were profiled in the HRC’s Export of Hate” report) has begun lobbying Slovakia’s constitutional court to allow activists to place a referendum on the country’s ballot that would reinforce the current bans on gay marriage, adoption, and domestic partner protections, Right Wing Watch reports. 

“The people of Slovakia should have the freedom to preserve marriage and family if they so choose,” said Alliance Defending Freedom senior legal counsel Roger Kiska, who filed an amicus brief with the court. “This referendum will allow Slovaks to affirm current Slovak law and important social values, which is perfectly acceptable under the Slovak Constitution.” […]

More than 400,000 citizens signed the petition supporting a referendum, according to Roger Kiska—more than the required number of signatures. However, Slovak President Andrej Kiska asked the Constitutional Court to review the measure because of a provision in the country’s constitution that forbids holding a referendum to change “fundamental rights and liberties.”

In June, the Slovakian parliament approved 102 to 18 a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Back in 2010 the country’s first gay pride parade was canceled after attacks from right-wing skinheads.