Technology Category
Independent news, views, opinions and reviews on the latest gadgets, games, science, technology and research from Apple and more. It’s about the technologies that change the way we live, work, love and behave.
Video: human wasp makes drone helicopter in his garden
Drones are invasive. And now YouTuber user Gasturbine101 has managed to make them still more annoying by creating one that can fly him over your heads.
Called Swarm – aka The Manned Aerial Vehicle Multirotor Super Drone – the device is a load of pricey drones stuck together.
Hail the human wasp!
Posted: 9th, September 2015 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Gif reveals how fast New Horizons is flying
How fast is New Horizon’s moving as it flew by Pluto? We know the numbers: the pod that’s taken nine year to reach Pluto is moving at 36,000 mph.
Clay Bavor has created a Gif to help us understand the phenomenal speed.
Flying at 37k feet, this is what it would be like to look out the window of a 747 vs. an SR-71 vs. a New Horizons.
Flying at 37k feet, this is what it would be like to look out the window of a 747 vs. an SR-71 vs. a New Horizons. pic.twitter.com/ChVsgK77Rl
— Clay Bavor (@claybavor) July 17, 2015
Posted: 7th, September 2015 | In: Gifs, Reviews, Technology | Comment
Watch: man refuses to stop shagging in VR sex simulation demo
Give a man a VR headset and a plastic doll and he’s good to go.
And go…
Posted: 28th, August 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Watch the making of Moray McLaren’s gorgeous video for We Got Time
The video to Moray McLaren’s We Got Time features lovely animations. What you see is not reliant on modern cameras and computers. What you see is what was filmed.
Londoner David Wilson tells us how it was done:
All the animations seen in the music video were created in camera. No stopframe techniques, or computer super-imposing was used; what you see is what rolled off the camera. The animations in the side-on views were produced by the camera capturing the moving reflections from the mirrored carousels, and the animations in the top-down views were created by matching the cameras frame rate to that of spinning record. The transitions between each section of animation was created by simply cutting or wiping between the bits of footage.
And shows us:
Posted: 25th, August 2015 | In: Music, Reviews, Technology | Comment
Drudges are dead: minimum wages creates robot waiters
A “female” robot waiter delivers meals for customers at robot-themed restaurant on May 18, 2015 in Yiwu, Zhejiang province of China. Sophomore Xu Jinjin in 22 years old from Hospitality Management of Yiwu Industrial and Commercial College managed a restaurant where a pair of robot acted as waiters. The “male” one was named “Little Blue” (for in blue color) and the “female” one was “Little Peach” (for in pink) and they could help order meals and then delivered them to customers along the magnetic track and said: “Here’re your meals, please enjoy”. According to Xu Jinjin, They had contacted with the designer to present more robot waiters to make the restaurant a real one that depends completely on robots. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
Waiter, waiter, there’s a robot in my soup:
Many chains are already at work looking for ingenious ways to take humans out of the picture, threatening workers in an industry that employs 2.4 million wait staffers, nearly 3 million cooks and food preparers and many of the nation’s 3.3 million cashiers….
The avalanche of rising costs is why franchisers are aggressively looking for technology that can allow them to produce more food faster with higher quality and lower waste. Dave Brewer is chief operating officer with Middleby Corp., which owns dozens of kitchen equipment brands, and is constantly developing new ways to optimize performance and minimize cost.
They’re blaming the minimum wage.
Posted: 18th, August 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Video: how to make a frisbee into a lethal weapon
Now to get a Hard Ticket to Hawaii – scroll down for the killer frisbee.
Spotter: b3ta
Posted: 18th, August 2015 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Watch: this magical hypnotising model train spiral
James Risner made this model train track. The train goes on. The train never stops.
Posted: 17th, August 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Police hunt man who cyber-flashed London woman a photo of his penis
Analogue flashing
You can send anyone a photo of your penis via a feature “buried in Apple’s iPhone”, says the Indy. No need to download Snapchat or send an email. One iPhone user found the feature and sent a stranger a photo of his knob.
The woman received the picture during her journey on a train in South London, when she was sent it using Apple’s AirDrop feature. The technology is intended to let people easily share pictures between phones — but can be used by anyone in the immediate vicinity to send images to other people.
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Posted: 13th, August 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Watch this video of Neodymium Magnets crushing things in slow-motion
The neodymium magnet is “the most widely used type of rare-earth magnet, is a permanent magnet made from an alloy of neodymium, iron and boron to form the Nd2Fe14B tetragonal crystalline structure.” But you already knew that.
Spotter: Wikipedia, Laughing Squid
Posted: 8th, August 2015 | In: Technology | Comment
Man creates great cat feeding machine that means feline must hunt for dinner (Video)
Ben Millam, a self-styled “aspiring geek”, has created a cat feeding machine. If Ben’s pet feline Monkey wants to eat he must hunt for RFID-tagged white plastic balls placed strategically around the home.
When Monkey finds a ball, he needs to place it into a bowl atop the machine. This triggers a release of food.
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Posted: 7th, August 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Watch Future Shock: in 1972 Alvin Toffler’s film excited our human response to over-stimulation
American writer Alvin Toffler poses during portrait session held on July 3, 1980 in Paris, France.
Those good people at Disinfo point us towards Future Shock, the film based on Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book. Released in 1972, Orson Welles narrates.
Alvin Toffler notes:
“We may define future shock as the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism’s physical adaptive systems and its decision-making processes… Put more simply, future shock is the human response to over-stimulation…”
This is Future Shock…
https://youtu.be/vVJrJk3q3MA?list=PLdho19ONpbQertunOijqH0d7Q_dKfSjzz
Posted: 11th, June 2015 | In: Film, Reviews, Technology | Comment
Watch a man play the guitar as surgeons operate on his brain
To Brazil, where Anthony Kulkamp Dias is playing the guitar as surgeons operate on his brain. Doctors wanted to monitor Mr Dias’ cognitive functions during the surgery. Playing a guitar was his idea.
The 20-year-old strummed Yesterday by The Beatles and a tune he wrote for his young son.
Kulkamp Dias tells The Telegraph:
“I played six soongs at certain times. My right hand was a bit weaker because that was the side that they were operating on. So I stopped and rested. I was interspersing songs and talking with them… The doctors asked me to repeat one of the country songs, so I even had an encore.”
Spotter: NY Daily News
Posted: 5th, June 2015 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment
Der Boxroboter: In 1983 East Germany’s robot boxer was going to rule the world
In 1987, Der Boxroboter was introduced to the world via Sports Illustrated:
The German Democratic Republic is very advanced in the use of scientific training methods for its athletes. Now the East Germans have beaten the world to the punch in the sport of boxing. Meet Der Boxroboter, a GDR-designed-and-built computerized robot that can hang in there with the best of fighters for hours on end. ”It’s tough to find good sparring partners, especially for heavyweights,” says Dieter Seala of the GDR trade mission, which plans to market DBs internationally for a little more than $33,000 apiece. ”Human sparring partners get tired after a few rounds. They get punched too many times and lose their consistency.”
DB is not just a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em robot. It can be programmed to assume any fighting style — attack the upper body, go for the belly, back an opponent into a corner — and is allegedly quicker across the ring than any human boxer. DB is equally adept at throwing rights and lefts and has great wheels (literally).
The action begins just before 20 minutes:
Spotters: Flashbak and The Afflictor
Posted: 1st, June 2015 | In: Sports, Technology | Comment
Painted bronze sculpture of Sir Tim Berners-Lee unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery
The National Portrait Gallery has unveiled Sean Henry’s painted bronze sculpture of Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
His lap-top’s in the leather bag slung over his shoulder.
Posted: 28th, May 2015 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Robo-ass: Patrick gets his prostate examined hundreds of times a year
Meet Patrick, the “simulated patient that talks to medical students while offering real-time feedback about the virtual prostate exam he’s receiving.” Patrick is the voice of a robotic backside:
Medical Daily reports:
Patrick serves a dual purpose: personal and professional. Personally, he comes equipped with software that enables him to interact emotionally with the student and voice any concerns he has about the procedure. Dr. Benjamin Lok, one of the program’s designers, says the interpersonal relationship Patrick helps foster is invaluable from a practicing perspective. “This virtual human patient can talk to the learner, expresses fears and concerns about the prostate exam, and presents a realistic patient encounter,” Lok told Geekosystem.
The other purpose he serves is functional. Patrick is endowed with force sensors, which can alert the student when he or she is being too aggressive, and can report how thorough the student was in his or her examination.
“Consider this,” Lok said, “how would a medical student know if they are doing a good prostate exam? Currently it is impossible for the educator to gauge performance. This simulation provides performance, feedback, and an opportunity to learn and lower anxiety.”
File under: robots taking students’ jobs.
Via: Medical Daily and DM
Posted: 22nd, May 2015 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment
Reader photocopies his Kindle to make a more expensive physical backup
Artist Jesse England’s “E-Book Backup” project sees him photocopy his Kindle version of George Orwell’s 1984. He photocopied every page, one by one. He then uploaded the scanned copy to his Kindle.
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Posted: 12th, May 2015 | In: Books, Reviews, Technology | Comment
Amazon shoot a massive penis into space
This is the unmanned Blue Origin suborbital spacecraft, New Shepard, which has soared 307,000 feet into the skies. Blue Origin is part-owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who, to the best of our knowledge, never has been pictured naked.
For more phallic pocket rockets, see Flashbak.
Posted: 1st, May 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Google maps feature the Android robot urinating on the Apple logo
On Google Maps, a look around the Pakistani city of Rawlpindi coughs up the image of the Android robot urinating on the Apple logo.
It’s not really there – although given that the world’s most wanted man Osama bin Laden was able to hide in Pakistan seemingly undetected for so long, maybe it is…
Posted: 24th, April 2015 | In: Technology | Comment
Wootton Bassett man accidentally sent girlfriend video of him having sex with their dog
David Buchanan, 34, of Royal Wootton Bassett, England, was watching porn at home. His mind wondered: what would it be like to have sex with a dog? So. He tried it out with the nearest dog he could get, a 10-month-old Rhodesian Ridgeback. And he recorded it. He then accidentally sent the footage to his girlfriend because the device he was on was linked to her cloud account.
She called the police.
In court, Buchanan pleased guilty to sexual assault. He is now on the sex offenders’ register for seven years and embarking on 50 days of rehabilitation.
Spotter: Daily Dot
Posted: 17th, April 2015 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment
7 creepy robots used by police (video)
Robots are just great. The can help defuse bombs, find people trapped under rubble and provide defence when hazard chamicals have been spilled. They can also watch you and control you.
In the Congo, solar-powered aluminium robots are huge loom over the roads in Kinshasa. Equipped with red and green lights these robots regulate the flow of people and traffic and film the scenes, relaying pictures back to police HQ.
Bit odd.
But not as creepy as the Knightscope K5 is a five-foot-tall autonomous robot “that roams around your neighborhood, observing and gathering data and trying to predict where and when criminal activity will occur.”
Paul Detrick points us towards other creepy robots in this film:
Posted: 7th, March 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Women in science: everything ‘manned’ is now robotic on the feminist internet
Rose Evelth has news for woman in science:
A man’s crew member’s work is never done:
Or ‘guide’ as the Chrome auto-demanner says…
Posted: 27th, February 2015 | In: Technology | Comment
Remote control: Samsung TVs are spying on you
Shouting at the telly might be a good thing. Samsung says its smart televisions with a ‘voice” function are listening.
Samsung warns:
“If your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 9th, February 2015 | In: Technology, TV & Radio | Comment (1)
Free Speech: comfortable students want Universities to censor free expression on Yik Yak
In the US of A, universities are clamping down on uncensorsed chatter.
Chapel Hill, N.C. — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is considering banning a smartphone app that some say encourages hate speech, but other schools say free speech among students needs to be promoted. Yik Yak allows users post anonymously to a local bulletin board, and those posts can be seen only by people in a certain geographic area.
“People have been saying some very racist, very hurtful things,” said Ashley Winkfield, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill who has kept a running tab of “yaks” that she finds troubling.
I find Winfield troubling. She’s a censor. If the law is broken, then Yik Yak can let the authorities know. But she’s a bansturbator.
During the height of the “Black Lives Matter” protests on campus last fall, for example, one person posted, “I really hate blacks, I’m going home where there aren’t any.”
Another poster said, “the way blacks are acting right now kind of justify a slavery.”
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Posted: 9th, February 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology | Comment
Grindr weakness lets homophobes keep tabs on you
Want to keep track of gays? That quesion to you ISIS and other violent homophobes.
Anyone on Grindr, (the dating app with millions of monthly users) has a weakness.
Arstechnica reports:
Synack independently confirmed the privacy threat, Grindr officials have allowed it to remain for users in all but a handful of countries where being gay is illegal. As a result, geographic locations of Grindr users in the US and most other places can be tracked down to the very park bench where they happen to be having lunch or bar where they’re drinking and monitored almost continuously, according to research scheduled to be presented Saturday at the Shmoocon security conference in Washington, DC.
…Grindr developers modified the app to disable location tracking in Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Liberia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and any other place with anti-gay laws. Grindr also locked down the app so that location information is available only to people who have set up an account. The changes did nothing to prevent the Synack researchers from setting up a free account and tracking the detailed movements of several fellow users who volunteered to participate in the experiment.
The proof-of-concept attack works by abusing a location-sharing function that Grindr officials say is a core offering of the app. The feature allows a user to know when other users are close by. The programming interface that makes the information available can be hacked by sending Grinder rapid queries that falsely supply different locations of the requesting user. By using three separate fictitious locations, an attacker can map the other users’ precise location using the mathematical process known as trilateration.
Synack researcher Colby Moore said his firm alerted Grindr developers of the threat last March. Aside from turning off location sharing in countries that host anti-gay laws and making location data available only to authenticated Grindr users, the weakness remains a threat to any user that leaves location sharing on. Grindr introduced those limited changes following a report that Egyptian police used Grindr to track down and prosecute gay people.
Hey’s it’s the tchnology, right. It’s faultess…
Posted: 19th, January 2015 | In: Technology | Comment
Just as lingerie turns on human males, tiny jackets do the same for male rats
If you want to get your pets breeding, get them some fetching outfits:
Just as lingerie turns on human males, tiny jackets do the same for male rats, a new study finds. In an unusual study, researchers allowed virgin male rats to have sex with females wearing special rodent “jackets.” Later, when scientists gave the males a chance to mate again, the animals preferred to mate with jacket-wearing female rats rather than with unclad ones.
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Posted: 6th, January 2015 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment
