There was some consternation in the media industry this week when the Chicago Tribune announced that it was letting more than 20 of its journalists go and handing over its local coverage to an outfit called Journatic, which looked to some like a “content farm” not unlike AOL’s hyper-local Patch unit. Meanwhile, Wired magazine wrote about another emerging competitor for the traditional news business — namely, the news-writing robots or algorithms employed by startup Narrative Science, which automatically generate sports and business stories. Is … Read More → "Are robots and content farms the future of the news?"

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed mysterious kilometer-sized objects that punch through Saturn’s chaotic and ever-changing F ring, leaving trails of ice behind them.

The objects pierce the planet’s thin ring at a gentle speed of just two meters per second, and then drag glittering ice particles out into space. The trails are typically 40 to 180 kilometers long. Astronomers are calling the ice trails “ … Read More → "Strange objects punching holes through Saturn’s outer ring"

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Some robots play soccer. Others just want a hug. But at Robogames 2012 last weekend, all eyes were on combat robots. Better known as combots, these hulking masses of metal and rubber battle to the death, vying for gold medals in boxing-style weight classes.

Robogames is an annual competition that pits robots head to head in more than 50 different events. There are foot races, soccer and hockey matches, maze-mastering challenges, and even … Read More → "10 angry robots you shouldn’t let inside your home"

There’s been a storm brewing in Japan—emoji, the ubiquitous text-based faces that dominate Japanese mobile communications, have been getting mistranslated between carriers. You send a picture of a bull, they get a picture of a cow, AND PEOPLE START DYING.via Gizmodo

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When you think of a solar cell, you probably think of something designed to absorb as much sunlight as possible. What you probably don’t think of is something that is also capable of emitting light. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what a new prototype device designed more like an LED does, and it recently set an efficiency record for … Read More → "Counterintuitive “LED-type” solar cell breaks efficiency record"

Planetary Resources just wrapped up a press conference in Seattle, officially announcing both its existence and its ambitious plan to mine near-Earth asteroids. We were listening in live, and here’s everything you need to know about how this asteroid mining plan is going to work and when it’s going to happen.

Essentially, Planetary Resources is looking to send spacecraft to mine near Earth asteroids for resources, ranging from precious metals (like platinum) to water. The company has assembled a team of engineers and visionaries with a large helping of financial support from the … Read More → "Planetary resources and asteroid mining: what you need to know"

Stanford is a hot house for the technology industry, producing a constant stream of graduates who have gone on to set up and run the great and good of Silicon Valley. But while such a close working relationship has seen many successes, the sheer quantities of money involved make the set-up increasingly tense.

In The New Yorker, Ken … Read More → "How Stanford feeds Silicon Valley—at a cost"

David Cundall, a British aviation enthusiast, has spent 15 years and about $200,000 trying to recover a group of 20 WWII-era Spitfire planes that were buried in 1945 in an undisclosed location in Burma, after being dubbed surplus back in 1945.

Cundall first learned of the buried planes from an offhand remark made by an American veteran. On a recent trip to Burma, a camera was sent down through a targeted borehole, confirming the location of the crated … Read More → "20 WWII-era planes are about to be exhumed from a secret Burmese location"

Henry sez, “Harvard Library’s Faculty Advisory Council is telling faculty that it’s financially ‘untenable’ for the university to keep on paying extortionate access fees for academic journals. It’s suggesting that faculty make their research publicly available, switch to publishing in open access journals and consider resigning from the boards of journals that don’t allow open access.”

“Harvard’s annual … Read More → "Harvard Library to faculty: we’re going broke unless you go open access"