As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Technology

SPACE: Spacecraft Could Nuke Dangerous Asteroid to Defend Earth

by
Asteroid - pixabay

The next time a hazardous asteroid lines Earth up in its crosshairs, we may be ready for the threat. Scientists and engineers with the U.S. government have drawn up plans for a spacecraft that could knock big, incoming space rocks off course via blunt-force impact or blow them to bits with a nuclear warhead, BuzzFeed News reported. The researchers announced the concept vehicle, known as the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER), in a study in the February issue of the journal Acta Astronautica. And the team will discuss HAMMER at an asteroid-research conference in May, according to … Read more

TECH & SEX: Porn AI Predicts Naughty Search Terms

by
man keyboard - pixabay

People’s future porn habits have been revealed – at least according to YouPorn’s artificial intelligence system. By the end of 2018, your favourite porn search terms will apparently include “girl time flanty,” “pussy firking” and “anal dangcuble”. In fact, “girl time flanty” will be the third-most popular search, according to YouPorn. We’re not sure what flanty means – or firking and dangcuble, for that matter. The site explained that its “data science and machine learning teams trained a recurrent neural network to look at our search trends,” and provide predictions for the end of the year. It seems society will … Read more

Robot Learns the Meaning of Love

by
Alex and Bina48

It’s been a typical week for typical college student BINA48. On Monday, BINA attended her robot ethics class. On Tuesday, the second-semester student had an excused absence to ring the bell at the stock exchange, and soon BINA will be assistant-teaching a kindergarten class and getting a face-lift at Hanson Robotics. So maybe BINA’s schedule isn’t that typical, and maybe the artificial-intelligence-driven robot isn’t the average college kid. But that hasn’t stopped the robot, which looks like the bust of a flesh-and-blood woman, from completing a Philosophy of Love course at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. Programmed … Read more

U+(N/T)M*G: Edge

by

Out in a lonely spot, somewhere around the vast Australian desert, there sits a little machine one might mistake for a shiny table. And that machine did something our most powerful telescopes couldn’t do. It found the first stars. The EDGES is a highly sensitive radio telescope with only one job, to find the faint frequency signal from the one-hit wonders at the beginning of stellar formation. The blue ones which burned hot and died young in glorious nova, and seeded the Universe with heavier atoms. The deaths of those first cosmic pioneers gave rise to what we needed for … Read more

Virgin Unveils Hyperloop that Will Travel 760 Mph

by
Virgin Hyperloop

Virgin Hyperloop One has released a prototype for a levitating pod that is designed to zoom at speeds as high as 760 mph (1,200 km/h) through a Hyperloop connecting Dubai to Abu Dhabi, according to news sources. The 87-mile (140 kilometers) journey usually takes 90 minutes by car, but the Hyperloop will take a mere 12 minutes, thanks to its innovative track — a long tube that has had its air removed to create a vacuum inside, according to the Daily Mail. Virgin unveiled the pod — which will be accelerated by an electromagnetic propulsion system within the vacuum tube … Read more

SCIENCE: Electronic Skin May Help Prevent Robots from Crushing Us (Unless They Really Want To)

by
robot - pixabay

A metallic robot hand with “Terminator”-like power sounds good for the movies. But what about a real-life future where that android is now cradling your baby or just shaking your hand? That’s when attributes like “gentle” and “sensitive” might be more warranted to avoid a human-crushing outcome. Electronic skin may be the answer, as it could give such robots (and even prosthetic limbs) the ability to sense how forceful their handshakes and cradles are when interacting with humans. A new electronic skin may also prove more robust than previous versions to prevent accidental damage. It could even heal with the … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Found

by

Sometimes, in the course of innocuous browsing for a topic, one comes across a cool bit of science and an unexpected tidbit pops up that really gets the muse going. This happened to me today. Almost two decades ago, NASA launched a little satellite whose mission was to study our magnetosphere. The neat little guy, IMAGE, sent us back a lot of real photographic gems of our little mudball and information that added to our scientific understanding of our world. It showed us the unique qualities of the protective, living shield our core generates, and how it interacts with our … Read more

FOR READERS: Whiz Bang Tech

by
Robotech Veritech

FOR READERS Today’s reader topic comes from QSFer Hank T. Cannon: What kind of sci-fi tech makes you go “OOOOOOOOOOOH!!!”? For a long time, for me it was transforming vehicles. The Veritech’s from “Robotech,” the cars from the short-lived “Pole Position” cartoon, and of course “M.A.S.K.” among others. I think, from a nostalgia perspective, “Mighty Orbots” is my favorite of them all, if only because of the specific mention of matter manipulation tech in the transformation and unity process. Writers: This is a reader chat – you are welcome to join it, but please do not reference your own works … Read more

TECH: Today In Creepy Robots

by
Boston Dynamics

We’ve seen Boston Dynamics robots open doors before, but this egress is different. Outfitted with an articulating arm and clamp similar to the one it used to wash dishes in the original video, we see the new SpotMini locate, recognize, and deftly operate a door handle, and then hold the door to let its arm-less sibling march through. It’s a more delicate operation than when the Atlas robot brutishly muscled its way through a push-bar door in 2016, which means we might have to reevaluate our original assessment of the new SpotMini as “slightly less terrifying.” By Joe – Full … Read more

TECH: “Human Uber” is Creepy.

by
Human Uber

Wouldn’t you love to lead a full, rich social life without the hassle of getting out of bed in the morning? Soon, you may be able to, thanks to a new prototype of a product called the ChameleonMask, which debuted earlier this week at the MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Singapore, NYMag.com reported. Touted by creator Jun Rekimoto, deputy director of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., as a “human Uber,” the service would essentially allow customers to hire a living, breathing human to walk through the world in his or her stead. “To do this,” Rekimoto wrote on his … Read more