July 2011 – Screenshot

Simulated Curiosity

I am loving this video simulating the new Mars rover’s abilities. They are going for a way more sophisticated landing technique than the airbag approach of Spirit and Opportunity, which will be exciting to see if it works – it also looks like there is more that could go wrong, just from the complexity. Curiosity is a way more anthropomoric-ible rover, which is adorable. I did laugh when they show Curiosity finally on the surface of Mars and then the voiceover says, “the descent stage cuts the rover loose and flies away”, while the descent stage zooms off over some … Continue reading Simulated Curiosity

Battery Hacking

By AMH

I love stories of unexpected weak spots, like the discovery that Apple laptop batteries can be hacked to store malicious code and brick the battery. The weakness revolves around cracking a couple of passwords, one of which is a factory default – with the protection being patches that will reset the password and lock the battery’s firmware. From there, it doesn’t seem like the researcher who discovered the weakness has found any particularly damaging holes from the battery back to the rest of the system, besides having the battery lie about its state, so this probably won’t be the root of … Continue reading Battery Hacking

WordPress?

By admin

So it seems to be time for new weblogging software around these parts. It would be nice to be able to re-enable commenting, and I never really bothered to customize Moveable Type all that much. So, we’re giving WordPress a try. This is going to be an entirely half-assed trial-by-error effort, because that’s the type of weblog this is so – nobody get their hopes up and we’ll all be fine!

Ultra Xray Specs

By AMH

I do not want a computer telling me what other people are feeling, or telling other people what it thinks I am feeling – these emotion indicating glasses do not appeal to me at all. First, even if people only assess others’ emotions correctly 54% of the time, a 64% success rate isn’t that impressive either. It means that over a third of the time, you could be getting the wrong advice from your emotional feedback device. Furthermore, this tells you nothing about why the person is reacting that way. If you say something that makes me react in a … Continue reading Ultra Xray Specs

Maybe they’ll scale it down for home use….

By AMH

So, seems that iRobot has come full circle, taken one of their high power industrial robots, and now attached a vacuum to it; specifically they have modded a Warrier to have an industrial vacuum attached to it to clean up radioactive dirt and debris at the Fukushima plant. Follow the link for video – go little robot, go!