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On Tech Brief today: Scary robots, the trousers of doom and piracy meets the sewing circle.

• Some robots are useful, some achieve an almost human empathy and some are simply terrifying. .

"The Telenoid R1 robot is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of the remote user. The robot's actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user's computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot's embedded speakers."

That may be what it is designed for, but Tech Brief can only think that it will be more responsible for inspiring nightmares in young and old.

• A good graphics cards can make your games look better and, it turns out, stop you being exposed to excessive amounts of radiation. Scientists in California are using graphical processing units (GPUs to you and me) .

"The approach uses GPUs - NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPUs in this case - to reconstruct an accurate image of a tumour with fewer CT scans. CT scans are used to generate the image of tumours prior to cancer treatment -- image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT). The problem is that repeated CT scans during a therapy regime raises the cumulative radiation dose, which worries physicians and patients."

Using GPUs means patients are exposed to about one-tenth of the radiation they would get if traditional imaging techniques were used.

• Piracy is not just a problem for the music, TV and film industry.

"Monique over at Inside Number Twenty has recently discovered her charts being "shared" without her permission and has done a few sums to see what the actual financial costs are to her and to the other businesses associated with hers. The results make sobering reading. No wonder designers are shutting up shop, as Jen Funk Weber reports - not merely because designs are being "shared" (read "pirated"), but because people are downloading free charts rather than paying for a designer's work."

• Continuing the fabric theme (or should that be thread?) comes the story of Micheal Learmonth who is being stalked by some shorts, or as our American cousins insist on saying, pants. .

"That's when the weirdness started. In the five days since, those recommendations have been appearing just about everywhere I've been on the web, including MSNBC, Salon, CNN.com and The Guardian. The ad scrolls through my Zappos recommendations: Hurley, Converse by John Varvatos, Quicksilver, Rip Curl, Volcom. Whatever. At this point I've started to actually think I never really have to go back to Zappos to buy the shorts -- no need, they're following me."

The reason they kept showing up was the behind-the-scenes recommendation engines that many web retailers now use. If this is the future, Mr Learmonth does not like it.

"As tracking gets more and more crass and obvious, consumers will rightfully become more concerned about it. There's a big difference between serving an auto ad to someone who's visited Edmunds.com in the last month and chasing them around the web with items once in their shopping cart."

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