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Trends

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

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Computer chip

I guess Google had a meltdown? It lasted long enough for people to notice? I must have been at the day job when that happened and missed it. It’s pretty funny how weird that sounds. I first jumped online as a wee teenager back when AOL and Netscape were the major players, when dial up was the only way to get online. When the first Diablo game was super popular. If something like Google crashed back then, we’d collectively shrug and find a different search engine. No big deal. Not to get political about this, but this is why monopolies … Read more

In Today’s Robot News…

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Spot - Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics, the company that has chronicled its development of robots characterized by viewers as both entertaining and terrifying, has launched its 4-legged canine-like Spot robot. Writes Boston Dynamics: “Spot is an agile mobile robot that you can customize for a wide range of applications. The base platform provides rough-terrain mobility, 360 degree obstacle avoidance, and various levels of navigation, remote control and autonomy. You can customize Spot by adding specialized sensors, software and other payloads. Early customers are already testing Spot to monitor construction sites, provide remote inspection at gas, oil and power installations, and in public safety. Spot … Read more

Greenland May Soon Be Green Again – Live Science

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Greenland - Sarah Das/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Greenland is melting faster today than it has at any time in the last 350 years, and probably much longer, new research finds. Surface melt from the icy island has increased 50 percent in the last 20 years compared with the early 1800s, before the industrial era, researchers report today (Dec. 5) in the journal Nature. The runoff alone is now contributing about a millimeter to the global average sea level per year, said study co-author Sarah Das, a glaciologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Climate change has hit Greenland very hard recently, and the ice sheet is responding quickly,” … Read more

SCIENCE: Is This “Hairy Ogre” Microbe A Whole New Branch on the Tree of Life?

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Hairy Ogre Microbe

Who needs aliens when there are bizarre life forms still to be discovered in Canada? Scientists recently detected two previously unknown species of microbes in a Canadian dirt sample, and the specimens were so unusual that the researchers had to reorganize the tree of life to make room for them. The microbes, also known as protists, belong to a group with the tongue-twisting name hemimastigotes, and the first-ever genetic analysis of these peculiar microorganisms revealed that they were even stranger than anyone suspected. Hemimastigotes, first observed in the 1800s, were previously classified as a phylum within a much larger group … Read more

TECH: We May Finally Get Our Flying Cars

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Flying Car

A “flying car” company funded by Google co-founder Larry Page seems to finally have a prototype that looks something like a personal aircraft people might actually use. The company, Kitty Hawk, released a video and statement debuting the vehicle, called Cora, today (March 13). Cora looks a bit like a tiny, one-seater airplane, but its wings are studded with small, upward-facing propellers that allow it to take off and land vertically. According to the video, the Cora is fully automated and fully electric, and requires no piloting skills to operate. That’s a far cry from another device Kitty Hawk unveiled … Read more

TECH & SEX: Porn AI Predicts Naughty Search Terms

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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

Virgin Unveils Hyperloop that Will Travel 760 Mph

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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

New Play Looks at All Male Society and Male Pregnancy

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Mankind

What if women were extinct? What if men evolved to bear children — and invented “Feminism” as a religion, devoted to making the world hospitable for the second coming of the bygone sex? Such is the dystopian setting of writer-director Robert O’Hara’s ambitious but stalled new play Mankind, which opened off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons last night. Though it’s more often men who are out of the picture, à la Wonder Woman’s Themyscira, single-sex societies are a familiar sci-fi trope. The question of men becoming pregnant is likewise well tread — Arnold Schwarzenegger tried it in Junior (1994), and scientists even … Read more

Making Astrology Queer – Gay Star News

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Colin Bedell

Colin Bedell, a self-described gay Gemini Twin from Long Island, New York, is on a mission to make astrology more inclusive of queer identities. ‘The soul has no gender,’ Bedell recently told Refinery29. ‘We have to move beyond body and sexual identification if we’re going to be integrous with this spiritual system.’ Bedell began studying astrology at age 12. ‘I’ve always had a pull to the metaphysical, mythological, and mystical. And astrology stands at that intersection beautifully,’ he tells GSN. By age 18, Bedell began chart analysis. And at age 27, he opened his own professional astrology practice, QueerCosmos. Bedell … Read more