By Cory Doctorow at 7:57 am Tuesday, Nov 8
Ars Technica has an in-depth review of Glitch, the whimsical, free-to-play game from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield (we've written about Glitch here before) and his new company, Tiny Speck. Glitch uses whimsical, cooperative tasks to produce fun and delight, rather than combat:
Tuning the quests and interactions to provide the right level of difficulty and reward was complicated. In beta testing, the development team found that while singing to butterflies was repetitive and boring, people would still sing to butterflies obsessively—because it provided small but guaranteed amounts of experience. The devs tried to balance this by making singing to animals cost energy, but then players simply farmed huge numbers of girly drinks (which made animals interactions cost no energy) and continued to grind the same thing again and again. The girly drinks were then nerfed, and people immediately complained.
"We realized that if we incentivized things that were inherently boring," Butterfield told me, "people would do them again and again—it showed up in the logs—but that they would secretly hate us."
Player housing is implemented, with an apartment-style design that lets anyone have their own home without cluttering up the landscape. You can decorate your home and grow things in your own garden on the patio. Unlike many games, in Glitch it does not take long to save up enough cash for a place of your own, though making it look less than spartan will take considerable effort.
Funny little touches to the game litter the game. For example, getting the right papers to let you purchase an apartment requires multiple trips to the Department of Administrative Affairs (Ministry of Departments) where you spend much time in a waiting area while bureaucratic lizard men play Farmville on tiny computers.
Butterfly milking and pig nibbling: building the strange world of Glitch
★
The black-and-white spotted "Dalmatian" horses depicted in some prehistoric European cave art
may have actually existed.
(Via Steve Silberman) — Maggie
By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 7:31 am Tuesday, Nov 8
At the Atlantic, science historian Suzanne Fischer has a really interesting post up about the development of pointe shoes. In the early 20th century, at a time when all sorts of technologies were remaking the way people lived, worked, and played, pointe shoes were doing the same thing for ballerinas.
In particular, Fischer writes, pointe shoes were almost the dance equivalent of Henry Ford's assembly line—they standardized bodies and turned dancers into a sleek, modern commodity.
... the new shoes forced dancers' bodies to move in new ways. Dancers on this pointe regimen developed characteristically long, lean leg muscles. Balanchine also encouraged dancers to let the shoes remake their bodies, including developing bunions that gave the foot just the right line. And as their bodies were remade, dancers became "like IBM machines," modern and indistinguishable. This had consequences for labor, too. For one, stars became a less central feature of dance companies as dancers became more interchangeable, and second, dancers came to spend hours working on their shoes -- altering, gluing, and caring for them. In fact, in 1980 dancers threatened to strike -- not over hours or pay, but for better pointe shoes, and better management of them.
Via Alexis Madrigal
Image: get the pointe III, a Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from chrishaysphotography's photostream
★
Levi's recommends freezing jeans, instead of washing them, as a way to save water.
The idea is that freezing will kill the bacteria that make your pants smell. But Stephen Craig Cary, an expert in low-temperature microbial life, begs to differ.
— Maggie
By Cory Doctorow at 7:03 am Tuesday, Nov 8
Robert Spahr, an assistant professor at Southern Illinois University Department of Cinema & Photography, writes,
I wanted to let you know that we are not only in the
middle of a labor strike, but most importantly, a public university has
shown by their actions, the dangers of Cloud Computing.
The University has disabled faculty email, and locked them out of their
personal work contained in Blackboard (a course
management system) as well as censoring pro-union comments from the
official University Facebook page.
Myself, and some fellow faculty and students quickly produced a blog
and Twitter feed to combat this censorship.
Turns out the uni isn't just nuking pro-union statements, but any questions about the labor dispute posted by its students and other stakeholders.
By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 6:58 am Tuesday, Nov 8
The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world. It's located in Dubai, a city with a lot of other skyscrapers. What Dubai doesn't have: A central sewage infrastructure that can accommodate the needs of a bunch of skyscrapers.
You see the problem.
Last night, while listening to NPR's Fresh Air, I heard Kate Ascher, author of The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper
, explain what happens to sewage from the Burj and Dubai's other tall buildings. It's only Tuesday, and this may be the craziest fact I hear all week.
TERRY GROSS: Right. So you know, you write that in Dubai they don't have, like, a sewage infrastructure to support high-rises like this one. So what do they do with the sewage?
KATE ASCHER: A variety of buildings there, some can access a municipal system but many of them actually use trucks to take the sewage out of individual buildings and then they wait on a queue to put it into a waste water treatment plant. So it's a fairly primitive system.
GROSS: Well, these trucks can wait for hours and hours on line.
ASCHER: That's right. I'm told they can wait up to 24 hours before they get to the head of the queue. Now, there is a municipal system that is being invested in and I assume will connect all of these tall buildings in some point in the near future, but they're certainly not alone. In India many buildings are responsible for providing their own water and their own waste water removal.
So it's, it's really – we're very fortunate in this country that we assume we can plug into an urban system that can handle whatever waste the building produces. That's not the case everywhere else in the world.
GROSS: Well, it really illustrates one of the paradoxes of modern life, that we have these just incredible structures that reach, you know, that seem to reach to the sky and then in a place like Dubai you have a 24 hour long line of trucks waiting to dispose of the waste from those buildings.
ASCHER: Right. Well, you know, you have to remember that a place like Dubai really emerged in the last 50 years. It was a sleepy, you know, Bedouin town half a century ago. And what you do is when you bring in the world's, you know, most sophisticated architects and engineers, you can literally build anything, including a building of 140 or 150 stories. But designing a municipal network of sewage treatment is in some ways more complex.
It certainly requires more money and more time to make it happen, so one just seemed to jump ahead of the other.
Image: Big Rigs, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from daveseven's photostream
By Cory Doctorow at 5:51 am Tuesday, Nov 8
Yelping with Cormac is a rather arch and very funny Tumblr with a simple premise: what if Cormac McCarthy was addicted to reviewing restaurants and stores on Yelp?
Whole Foods Market
Noe Valley - San Francisco, CA
Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM
Four stars.
The sheriff and the posse were now a block away and riding seven abreast rifles in hand and horses snorting and wildeyed. The outlaw dropped his pistol and stiffwalked into the parking lot of a grocery store. Around him young women in skintight sporting clothes stopped and stared.
The ground shook as the posse rode up on the parking lot entrance but the sheriff stopped his riders with a raised hand and sawed his palamino around sending the animal sidestepping like a showhorse into a newspaper box which fell over with a great cacophony. When the noise subsided the neighborhood and the parking lot were silent. The riders and the outlaw and the women frozen like actors in some gypsy roadshow.
A rider wearing an elaborate mustache and carrying a Winchester onehanded nudged his quarterhorse toward the sheriff. Hell he’s right there sheriff.
I know it. Im lookin at him same as you.
What are we waitin for then.
We caint touch him now deputy. They got their own way here.
The riders watched as the women left their station wagons and strollers and encircled the outlaw. As if some ancient instinct united them. Silent as wolves and staring intently at the broken man standing there. He saw his mistake and called out to the riders reaching toward them with his one good arm but was struck down with a savage blow from a rolled yoga mat.
Yelping with Cormac
(via Making Light)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:29 am Tuesday, Nov 8
A man identified as Russian historian Anatoly Moskvin has been charged with desecrating graveyards after Russian police found 29 mummified bodies dressed in bright clothes and posed like dolls in a "gruesome tableau" in his home.
The national daily Moskovsky Komsomolets said Moskvin was detained at a cemetery while carrying a bag of bones. But Kriminalnaya Khronika, an online publication specialising in crime news from the Nizhny Novgorod region, said police investigators had discovered the bodies when they visited Moskvin to consult him about the desecration.
Moskvin, who had long been known in the region for his interest in the dead, wrote several articles about cemeteries in the region. A linguistic expert by training, he specialised in Celtic culture and studied 13 foreign languages....
In a 2007 interview with the newspaper Nizhegorodsky Rabochy, or Nizhny Novgorod Worker, Moskvin said he had inspected 752 cemeteries, often travelling 20 miles a day by foot.
Last month he wrote a piece for a publication on necrology to explain his interest in the dead. He said that when he was 12, he came across a funeral procession whose participants forced him to kiss the face of a dead 11-year-old girl. He said he later grew interested in the occult.
Russian historian kept 29 mummified bodies at home, police say
By Cory Doctorow at 2:03 am Tuesday, Nov 8
Australian comedy-news program The Hamster Wheel covers archconservative British politician Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a Thatcherite climate denier, and former editor for The Sunday Telegraph and other right-wing papers. The Hamster Wheel decides that Monckton (who once advocated confining people with AIDS to lifetime quarantine) must actually be a long-running Sacha Baron Cohen ("Bruno," "Borat") character and makes a compelling case that this must be so.
The Hamster Wheel: Lord Monckton
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
★
Reminder: I'm doing a
live reading in Berlin tonight at 2000h (Sankt Oberholz, Rosenthaler Str. 72, Berlin Mitte). Tschüss!
— Cory
By Cory Doctorow at 9:32 pm Monday, Nov 7
This LG mobile phone ad "event" projected a startling and well-conceived montage of 3D effects onto a building's facade in Berlin. It's all very spectacular and beautiful -- pretty amazing for an ad (though I can imagine that if a whole city were taken over by this sort of advertising every night, it would be rather tedious). Meanwhile, I seriously covet that projector, which is blasting out enough lumens that I wonder if it incinerates small insects that stray into the path of the beam. I could get into serious mischief with one of those.
LG Optimus Hyper Facade in Berlin - Long Version
(Thanks, Dad!)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:55 pm Monday, Nov 7
I wrote an article in CRAFT about making straight wood cuts with a cheap miter box.
Project 101: Make Straight Wood Cuts with a Miter Box
By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 3:07 pm Monday, Nov 7
I got to have another great conversation with synthetic biologist and blogger Christina Agapakis on Bloggingheads.tv's Science Saturday. Christina and I chatted about some of the issues that came up at an energy conference I spoke at recently, examined the possibility of using synthetic biology to create fuel, and talked about how we navigate the often-confusing questions of technology and risk.
By Maggie Koerth-Baker at 2:49 pm Monday, Nov 7
Last week, physicist Brian Greene answered a lot of questions—including a few submitted by BoingBoing readers!—at a live event in New York City. If you missed it, you can watch a recording of the event online now.
But wait, there's more! Dr. Greene only had an hour to talk, and a metric crap ton of very good questions—including, again, some from BoingBoing readers—went unanswered. That's why I'm pleased to announce that the World Science Festival has added a new column to their website, called Ask Brian Greene Anything. For the next month, he'll be sifting through leftover questions from the live event as well as new submissions to answer a physics question every day.
Here's the latest:
Q: If nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, then how did the universe become so big and vast in the blink of a micro-second during the big bang? — Carlos Cordoba, Queens, NY
A: You have to be a little careful when invoking the notion that “nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.” Einstein’s special theory of relativity actually shows that nothing can move through space at a speed greater than light speed. But the process that makes the universe “so big and vast” does not involve objects moving through space. Instead, it arise from the swelling — the expansion — of space itself. And nothing in special relativity constrains the rate at which space itself expands. Indeed, in the early moments of the universe, the expansion of space can rightly be said to have exceeded the speed of light, meaning that regions of space were driven apart via the expansion at a greater-than-light speed. Moreover, since the expansion of space is cumulative (the farther apart two points are — the more space there is between them — the faster they rush apart as space expands), even today there’s a sense in which sufficiently distant regions are receding from each other at a greater-than-light speed.
Also, an important reminder: Reader Kevin Harrelson needs to email me in order to claim his free DVD set of Brian Greene's new NOVA series, "Fabric of the Cosmos." You can reach me at maggie.koerth@gmail.com.
Image: Dark and ordinary matter in the Universe, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from argonne's photostream
★
After phone hacking allegations started hurting last year at U.K. tabloid News of the World,
it placed its victims' lawyers -- even their children -- under surveillance. [BBC]
— Rob
By David Pescovitz at 11:58 am Monday, Nov 7
Don't forget that a 1,300 foot asteroid, about the size of an aircraft carrier, will fly by Earth tomorrow even closer to us than the moon. Don't worry, it won't hit. It'll be tricky to catch a glimpse, but you might spot it if you have a telescope with at least a 6-inch mirror, says Scott Fisher, the director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Astronomical Sciences. From Space.com:
"It turns out that YU55 is going to be pretty faint when it flies by," he explained. "To make it even more difficult to observe … it will be moving VERY quickly across the sky as it passes."
"The best time to observe it would be in the early evening on November 8th from the east coast of the US," Fisher said. "However! It is going to be VERY faint, even at its closest approach. You will need a decent sized telescope to be able to actually see the object as it flies by."
The event marks the first time since 1976 that an object as large as asteroid 2005 YU55 has passed this close to Earth, Fisher said. The next time an asteroid of similar size will approach close to Earth will be in 2028.
"How to Spot the Huge Asteroid 2005 YU55's Close Encounter With Earth"
By David Pescovitz at 11:39 am Monday, Nov 7
In September, I posted about Bolshoi, the most accurate computer simulation of the universe in the world. (Visualizations from Bolshoi were also seen in Bjork's Biophiliar performance.) Bolshoi's co-creator, UC Santa Cruz astrophysicist Joel Primack, has now emailed me this thrilling news confirming the accuracy of his computer simulations. Joel says:
By comparing Hubble Space Telescope observations to our simulations, we have for the first time accurately measured the rate at which galaxies merge with each other in the universe from nearby out to when it was about 1/3 of its present age. Such mergers play a crucial role in galaxy evolution.
"Astronomers Pin Down Galaxy Collision Rate" (NASA)
"Astronomers pin down galaxy collision rates by comparing Hubble Space Telescope photographs to supercomputer simulations" (UC-HIPACC)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:20 am Monday, Nov 7
These student protesters in Bogota, Colombia have really got it going on, makeupwise.
Student protestors in Colombia know how to get attention
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
(Image: cropped, downsized thumbnail from a photo by AP Photo/Fernando Vergara))
By David Pescovitz at 10:33 am Monday, Nov 7
A couple years ago, I posted that BB pal Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis and Visionary State, wrote the libretto for a critically-acclaimed rock opera about Burning Man. How to Survive the Apocalypse: A Burning Opera returns to Los Angeles on November 20 while Reno and Vegas (!) staging are in the works! Erik informs us that CDs are also available of all the music available as MP3s and a CD for sales at CDBaby. I like how on CDBaby, it says that the soundtrack is recommended if you like Rocky Horror Picture Show, Hair, and Jesus Christ Superstar! Git yer freak on!
A Burning Opera: "CDs are Done; Shows Coming in LA, Reno & Vegas!"
By David Pescovitz at 10:15 am Monday, Nov 7
Our pals at GAMA-GO are hosting their big holiday sale in San Francisco this Saturday. Have a cocktail! Save some money! Harass co-proprietor Greg Long about his incendiary comments on this site!
"GAMAGO’s 8th Annual San Francisco Holiday Sale!"
By Xeni Jardin at 10:14 am Monday, Nov 7
[Video Link]
The song, and the video, which apparently led to Die Antwoord's divorce from Interscope to go independent. This will be the first single to be released off their soon-to-be-self-released album TEN$ION.
Warning: If you are afraid of spiders or scorpions, you should not watch this video.
By Xeni Jardin at 9:33 am Monday, Nov 7
An Oakland Police Department officer shot blogger and videographer Scott Campbell with a projectile (a "bean bag" round or rubbber bullet, it's not clear which) while he was recording video during Occupy protests this weekend. Mr. Campbell was not threatening the officers or engaged in any violent activity that required this response. Is it legal for police to shoot photographers in a public place simply because they do not want to be photographed? [Video Link]
By Rob Beschizza at 9:29 am Monday, Nov 7
"Free Ego," a chalk painting designed by Leon Keer, was inspired by Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Terracotta Army "in honor of the arrival of Ego Leonard and to support his release out of his custody." [Submitted by Planet Chalkpainting]
By Xeni Jardin at 9:18 am Monday, Nov 7
[UPDATE: Here's the video that led to the "divorce."—XJ]
Anyone can not sign with a major label (see there? you just did it yourself!), but to sign with one and then sign off abruptly when the label tells you your work needs to be reworked for more mainstream appeal? That's news.
And that, according to those close to the matter, is what just happened between South Africa's Die Antwoord and Interscope/Universal Music Group.
The zef-rockers have a new album in the can, TEN$ION. It was to be their second release on Interscope, and due out within the next few months. The band chose a track to lead with as a single, titled Fok Julle Naaiers ("Fuck you all," loosely). The label heard it, perceived it as too hard for a single, and according to our sources, wanted the entire record to be reworked for more pop appeal (think Gaga or Black-Eyed-Peas). Ninja and Yo-Landi would have none of it, and asked their attorneys (one of whom was Michael Jackson's former rep) to sever all ties with Interscope, forgoing a million dollar guarantee on the new record and choosing complete creative independence.
From the band's online diary:
So anyway... Interscope offered us a bunch of money again to release our new album TEN$ION.
But this time, they also tried to get involved with our music, to try and make us sound like everyone else out there at the moment.
So we said: 'U know what, rather hang on to your money, buy yourself something nice...we gonna do our own thing.
Bye bye'
The band will release TEN$ION through a new independent label of their own, ZEF RECORDZ. Songs will be available as digital downloads and on flash drives, "Because CDs are like motherfucking VHS," Ninja tells Boing Boing.
Read the rest
By Cory Doctorow at 8:38 am Monday, Nov 7
Ah, the good old days, when it was
de rigeur to stick a knife-blade onto every single object one carried, back before the era of aviation confiscation totum:
Eight distinct purposes are served by the versatile pocket case, illustrated above. A cigarette compartment occupies the center, supplemented by a concealed writing tablet, a telescoping pencil, and a stamp container. In addition the case contains a five-inch rule, a lighter, a pocket knife, and a watch. The entire outfit folds flat into small enough space to fit the palm of the hand and is so small that it can easily be slipped into your vest pocket exactly as an ordinary cardcase is carried.
NEW POCKET CASE HAS EIGHT DISTINCT USES (Jun, 1933)
By Avi Solomon at 8:20 am Monday, Nov 7
Photo: Eyal Ophir with his daughter Sahar, courtesy of the subject.
Eyal Ophir was primary researcher on the pioneering Stanford Multitasking study. He now designs information interfaces for the browser RockMelt.
Avi Solomon
How did you get to studying multitasking at Stanford?
Eyal Ophir
While I was at Stanford, Cliff Nass (my advisor, and a global expert on human-computer interaction) introduced me to some great ethnographic work done by Ulla Foehr and Donald Roberts at the Dept. of Communication looking at media consumption among youth. They saw that young people were reporting more media-use hours than actual hours, and figured out these same young people must be consuming multiple streams of media simultaneously in order to fit it all in. This is where I was introduced to the concept of Media Multitasking. I came from a cognitive psychology background, and I was inspired by Anthony Wagner's work on memory and cognitive control (Anthony was my reference for all things cognitive, and ended up being the third author on the paper). So for me, the interesting question was simply how these kids are managing to process and control so much information all at once. Read the rest
By Mark Frauenfelder at 7:00 am Monday, Nov 7
NOTE: If you did not get Gweek episode 24 or 25, then please re-subscribe using this feed URL.
In this episode of Gweek, Ruben Bolling and I are joined by the cartoonist and illustrator Michael Kupperman, who has a hilarious new book out, called Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010. Ruben interviewed Michael about his work and then the three of us went on to talk about the folllowing things:
I got rid of my standing desk last week and am looking for a better solution.
Using an hour-timer as a self-check throughout the day
Esther Williams' autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid
Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
Cul de Sac Golden Treasury, by Richard Thompson
Orchid
Twitter
Uni-watch: The Obessive Study of Athletic Aesthetics
Secret Fun Blog
The Walking Dead TV show
The Last Man Alive
We'd like to give a special thanks EdgeCast Networks, our bandwidth provider and sponsor!
Download Gweek 025 as an MP3 | Subscribe to Gweek via iTunes | Subscribe via RSS | Download single episodes of Gweek as MP3s
By Cory Doctorow at 6:51 am Monday, Nov 7
From the annals of epic bug reports, "Simultaneous cat and external keyboard input causing kernel panic":
I encountered a kernel panic with the 3.1.0 kernel on a Dell Latitude
E6410 while inputting simultaneously from the integrated keyboard with
a cat and from the external keyboard myself. I was trying to type my
password with the external keyboard (pw dialog already visible), but I
noticed that the computer didn't seem responsive to my typing. Then
suddenly the cat shifted his position and there was a kernel panic
involving input handling. I'm now using i8042.nokbd kernel parameter
as a workaround, something I've found useful also earlier.
I wonder if anyone else is experiencing similar problems? This didn't
seem to happen with 3.0, which was the first kernel version I used on
this E6410. Although it has to be noted that the internal keyboard
input was not yet as heavy either at that time. Please test if you can
reproduce the problem.
Simultaneous cat and external keyboard input causing kernel panic
By Rob Beschizza at 6:45 am Monday, Nov 7
Korg, maker of miniature synthesizers such as the Monotron
and Monotribe
, have two more analog pocket-synths for me to noodle around with for 20 minutes then put in a drawer: the Monotron Duo and Monotron Delay. Read the rest
By Rob Beschizza at 6:32 am Monday, Nov 7
Skinemax, described as "Koyaanisqatsi for a generation raised on late night television and B-movie VHS tapes," stars Kurt Russell. [Video Link]
By Rob Beschizza at 6:26 am Monday, Nov 7
Google Books' scan of Edward Spitzka's book, "Insanity", includes this interesting page concerning involuntary constriction of the pupils, disturbances in the flow of words, and how patients distort letterforms when writing insane documents. [Thanks, Joel!]
★
Best Buy Europe, jointly owned by Best Buy and the U.K.'s Carphone Warehouse,
is to close all its "big box" stores in Britain: "Since 2008, the consumer electronics marketplace has changed substantially." [Digital Spy]
— Rob
★
From Jason Palmer at the BBC: "a comparatively simple means to
take control of fantastically complex biochemical processes."
— Rob
By Cory Doctorow at 10:04 pm Sunday, Nov 6
Codex Seraphinianus is a much-sought-after, very weird book, now available as a free (slightly dodgy) scanned (low-rez) download via the Internet Archive: "The Codex Seraphinianus is a book written and illustrated by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and appears to be a visual encyclopedia of an unknown world, written in one of its languages, a thus-far undeciphered alphabetic writing."
As JWZ notes: "During my childhood, this book was treasured unobtainium. And now it's a click away. This post-informational-scarcity world is weird."
Codex Seraphinianus
(via JWZ)
By Xeni Jardin at 3:34 pm Sunday, Nov 6
via Bob Jaroc: "Spotted in an alleyway over the road from my flat in brighton."
By Cory Doctorow at 2:56 pm Sunday, Nov 6
From How to Be a Retronaut, a "Stereo Stack" anthology: 4,000+ pixels of "In Stereo" logos from LP jackets, ganked from the
Stereo Stack site.
Stereo Stack
By Cory Doctorow at 8:52 am Sunday, Nov 6
Mneptok sez, "Nerdigurumi offers up free amigurumi crochet patterns for whimsically serious alpha geeks."
Nerdigurumi - Free Amigurumi Crochet Patterns with love for the Nerdy
(Thanks, Mneptok!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:48 am Sunday, Nov 6
Fraunhofer's 3D printed exploration spiders are intended for use "as an exploratory tool in environments that are too hazardous for humans, or too difficult to get to." They use hydraulic bellows to execute advanced maneuvers, including jumping:
With its long extremities, the spider has a range of ways to get around. Some models can even jump. This is possible using hydraulically operated bellows drives that serve as joints and keep limbs mobile. With no muscles to stretch their legs, these creatures build up high levels of body pressure that they then use to pump fluid into their limbs. Shooting fluid into the legs extends them. “We took this mobility principle and applied it to our bionic, computer-controlled lightweight robot. Its eight legs and body are also fitted with elastic drive bellows that operate pneumatically to bend and extend its artificial limbs,“ explains Dipl.-Ing. Ralf Becker, a scientist at IPA. The components required for locomotion, such as the control unit, valves and compressor pump, are located in the robot‘s body; the body can also carry various measuring devices and sensors, depending on the application at hand. Hinges interoperate with the bellows drives so that the legs can move forward and turn as needed. Diagonally opposed members move simultaneously, too. Bending the front pairs of legs pulls the robotic spider‘s body along, while stretching the rear extremities pushes it.
High-tech spider for hazardous missions
(
via JWZ)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:45 am Sunday, Nov 6
In this clip, a "modern samurai" called Isao Machii efficient slices a large variety of challenging objects in twain with his sword, including a round fired from a nearby pellet-gun. It's pretty astounding stuff.
Modern Samurai Isao Machii - Japanese (english edit)
(via Reddit)
★
Sweden's Pirate Party says it was avidly courted by the sales staff for Gamex, the largest games conference in the country. The party bought a booth and went to some expense arranging to have it decorated and staffed. At the last minute,
Gamex mysteriously banned the Pirate Party from exhibiting at the show, saying the conference was "a venue for political conflict and the party’s presence could cause problems" (despite the fact that other political organizations are exhibiting there).
— Cory
+
