-
Tech NewsFreakish Kinect Eyeball Hack Follows You Around the Room
What could be more fun than a Kinect-powered eyeball that blinks to life when you enter the room and then follows you around until you leave? A lot of things, actually, because this is terrifying. The Technology Studio created this “display” by hacking together a large, spherical Puffersphere display (duh) with some custom software. They … Continued
By Jack Loftus -
Tech NewsThis House Wears the Address On Its Sleeve
You say your address is Number 523? Hmm. I still can”t seem to find it. Look harder, man! The address is staring you right in the face! Tomfoolery aside, this is a string of prefabricated Numbers Houses by Mitsutomo Matsunami Architects & Associates, a Japanese studio with an apparent love of buildings that resemble things … Continued
By Jack Loftus -
Tech News
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop Confirms the Obvious
Lest there be any doubt as to when those ballyhooed Nokia phones running Windows Phone 7 are being developed, CEO Stephen Elop confirmed that said handsets were being created right this instant. Availability is another story: 2012 [Reuters via BGR]
By Jack Loftus -
Tech NewsSome MacBook Pro Thunderbolt Ports Are Messing with Cinema Displays
Some 24-inch and 27-inch Apple Cinema Displays owners are experiencing distracting flicker when connected to a MacBook Pro via the new Thunderbolt port. Proof is in the video, but with all new tech issues, how widespread is this? [Engadget]
By Jack Loftus -
io9
The colorful story of diffraction grating
One of the coolest things about physics is that the same basic concept can pop up in several seemingly unrelated things: say, a CD, the seed shrimp’s antennae, certain fossils in the Burgess shale, and scientific instruments used for spectroscopy. I’m talking about a diffraction grating, which Wikipedia helpfully defines as “an optical component with … Continued
Jennifer Ouellette - Cocktail Party Physics -
io9
Propaganda posters urge you to keep calm and shoot Nazi dinosaurs
When Hitler’s dino-hordes storm Normandy, will you have the wherewithal to beat them back? Allied propaganda posters from a lizard-filled WWII urge you to take arms against these Jurassic Nazis, while Axis posters tout raptors as the strength of Germany. These propaganda posters are actually promotions for the video game Dino D-Day, which finally gets … Continued
By Lauren Davis -
ScienceSpace & SpaceflightNow This Is How You Retrieve Two Massive Solid Rocket Boosters from the Ocean!
I still can’t believe this is the first up-close, 480p video of NASA retrieving the space shuttle’s two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) from the Atlantic Ocean, and yet it is! The SRBs are, in a word, massive. And they float! Obviously, right? How else would NASA retrieve these two huge towers of propulsion from the … Continued
By Jack Loftus -
Tech News
Monirobo Robots Deployed at Fukushima to Help Monitor Radiation Risks
A robot named Monirobo has been dispatched to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Station this week to monitor areas of the site that have become so saturated with radiation humans dare not venture there. Monirobo (monitor robot) was developed by the Nuclear Safety Technology Center at Japan’s Ministry of Education. The robot has some heft to … Continued
By Jack Loftus -
io9Four fascinating documentaries about nuclear power
Curious about Uranium mining or the biological ramifications of nuclear pollution? Here’s an assortment of enlightening documentaries that will fill you in on sundry nuclear topics (and some of them can be watched online). Into Eternity This 2009 documentary takes a look at Finland’s underground Onkalo nuclear storage facility (above) and the precautions the Finnish … Continued
-
Tech News
Crash Test Tesla Model S Alpha Hints at Electric Sports Sedans to Come
The orange beauty here is one of the crash test cars that Tesla will send into a wall at some future date to judge the car’s impact worthiness. It’s also an indication of what’s next from the electric car company. Manufactured in the company’s brand spankin’ new Fremont, Calif. facility (well, recently acquired from GM/Toyota … Continued
By Jack Loftus -
io9
What happens when two stars fall into each other?
The universe is mostly empty, but once in a great while stars get close enough to crash into each other. Two stars recently combined to form Sco V1309. Find out what happened when they did. In 2008, two stars became one, only no one knew it yet. All anyone knew was a previously unknown star … Continued
-
Tech News
U.S., French and British Forces Strike Libyan Military Positions (Updated)
An unidentified fighter jet plummets from the skies over Benghazi, Libya. CNN was unable to independently identify if the plane was indeed a rebel fighter sent to reinforce their position in that city, as was suggested by a source. Meanwhile, tanks from both sides of the conflict are massing at Benghazi, which has become a … Continued
By Jack Loftus -
io9
Victorian robot porn “Chester 5000 XYV” is a naughty tale of true romance
Jess Fink’s webcomic Chester 5000 XYV is a pornographic sexbot tale with a twist: a Victorian gentleman builds a robot to satisfy his sexually voracious wife, but wife and well-endowed automaton fall deeply (and, of course, passionately) in love. A while back, we profiled Fink’s Star Trek: The Next Generation comics – starring a very … Continued
By Lauren Davis -
Tech NewsThis Week’s Best Apps
In this week’s app roundup: Rainbow 6, miniaturized; your photos, comicified; social video sharing, simplified; the license plate game, reinvented; the music mag, digitized; Instapaper, socialized; Time Warner cable TV, brought to your tablet, and much much more. The week’s best iPhone apps Halftone: Its aim is straightfoward: make your photos look like comics. You … Continued
-
io9Robonaut 2 joins first human-robot space crew
Star Trek’s Data must be smiling. One of his kind has finally made it to the High Frontier. The voyages of Robo Trek have begun! Robonaut 2, or R2, was finally unleashed from his foam lined packing crate by ISS crewmembers Cady Coleman and Paolo Nespoli on March 15 and attached to a pedestal located … Continued
Ken Kremer - Universe Today -
io9
The never-was 1000 MPH transcontinental railroad from New York to Los Angeles
Here’s another speculative transit project right up there with that underground bullet train between New York and Philly. In 1948, Modern Mechanics showcased this supersonic cross-continental rocket train. You could go from NYC to LA in three hours! At 1,000-mph your train will travel as fast as the sun in its apparent motion across the … Continued
