I love this poster too. via Kottke

When complete, the Vestas V164 is slated to be the world’s largest and most powerful wind turbine on the planet. Standing 443 feet tall, with a diameter spanning 538 feet, the turbine to generates eight megawatts of power. This is no child’s pinwheel. In fact, it cranks out enough juice to power a whole neighborhood.
via Gizmodo

Read More → "The world’s most powerful wind turbine has blades bigger than a 747 wing"

The Mars rover Curiosity checked in on Mars using Foursquare yesterday, the first check-in from another planet. Foursquare users can keep up with the rover as it trundles across Gale Crater, photographing its route and touching rocks along the way. So far the rover’s human team on Earth has posted a couple photos.

Foursquare users will be able to earn a new Curiosity-themed badge by visiting laboratories, museums and science … Read More → "The Mars rover gets a Foursquare account and checks in from the Red Planet"

NASA is mulling over a plan that would put a deep-space station on the moon’s far side. NASA is considering a plan, which would place astronauts at an Earth-Moon liberation point to help forward the agency’s goal of pushing beyond low-Earth orbit with its Orion spacecraft design. Placing astronauts and an orbiting station at the Earth-Moon L2 Gateway has many benefits according to supporters of the plan.
via < … Read More → "NASA considers space station on the moon’s far side"

Think art. What comes to mind? Maybe Picasso, Rodin, Dali.

Now think technology – and you’ll probably imagine a smartphone or a computer.

Throughout history, technology has provided artists with new tools for expression.

Today, these two seemingly distinct disciplines are interlinked more than ever, with technology being a fundamental force in the development … Read More → "Technology and art: Engineering the future"

There was a time — early in my computing career — that your average printer could output better results than any screen could. In the days before WYSIWYG word processors, we would guess what the printed product might look like and then let an Okidata monstrosity scream out ugly 5 x 7 dot matrix results.

When it worked, it worked well, and we were thrilled that our 16KB machines could make something real. A continuous ream of paper … Read More → "This is the Modem World: Why are printers stuck in the 20th century?"

Not ones to beat around the bush (or perhaps in his case, the tree), Cyprus-based Softarex manufactures software-with-advanced-research-from-experts. Its flagship product codEnforcer seeks out problem in source code and suggests improvements.

The sleep-deprived, overworked software engineer is something of a tech-scene trope, and the 45 employees at Softarex are working hard to give them a rest.
via Venture Beat

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Ray Kurzweil is looking forward to the year 2029.

That’s the year he predicts our technology will be able to think without us — aka the date that computers pass the Turing test. Our computers are growing more powerful at an exponential rate, and even Kurzweil is impressed by what we can do with artificial intelligence (AI) today. He’s been making the prediction that 2029 is the date for some time, and he repeated the date onstage yesterday at the DEMO Fall 2012 conference multiple times. Still, even to someone who has seen … Read More → "Even Ray Kurzweil is nervous about a future with hyper-intelligent machines"

Dairy and dragsters are two words you don’t usually see next to each other, but you just did. A team of researchers has set a land speed record for one-liter engines, powered by industrial waste from cheese production.

The Aggie A-Salt Streamliner hit a top speed of 65.344 mph at the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association’s 2012 World of Speed event. That’s not a bad for a one-liter 22 … Read More → "Dairy-powered dragster breaks a land speed record"

Before reading any further it is imperative that you flick through the gallery of kittens and puppies that accompanies this story. Now. Go on. Seriously, we’ll wait.

Back? Good. You should be ready to concentrate fully on the task at hand — examining a study which claims to have found that exposure to cute animals increases the brain’s concentration levels for a … Read More → "Looking at cute images may improve concentration"